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ATHFINDER 

RICHARD LLOYD JONES 



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PATHFINDERS 

AND OTHER 

Saturday Sermonettes 



PATHFINDERS 

AND OTHER 

Saturday Sermonettes 

Which <iAppeared in 

THE TULSA TRIBUNE 

During the Tear ig20 
BY 

Richard Lloyd Jones 



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■S 



TULSA, OKLAHOMA 

TULSA TRIBUNE COMPANY 

1921 






^o,V 



Copyright, 1921 

BY 

Richard Lloyd Jones 



FEB \2\'i2\ 

OiC!.A608318 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Pathfinders I 

Law 4 

Thrift 7 

Are You Educated ? lo 

Dare the Impossible 14 

The Good of Trouble 17 

Eve's Other Children 20 

Washington 23 

Sunshine 26 

The Open Mind 28 

The Life Apart 30 

Good Humor 33 

Easter 35 

Work 38 

Power 40 

Wisdom 43 

Failure 46 

Music 49 

The New Heroism 52 

Personal Liberty 55 

Fellowship 58 

Hope 61 

Idealism 64 

Clothes (^'j 

Leadership 70 

Simplicity 73 

Books 75 

Enemies of Society 78 

Don't Sneer, Cheer 80 

V 



vi Contents 

PAGE 

They Who Triumph 83 

Silence 86 

Think It Out 88 

Greatness 90 

Justice 93 

Liberty 96 

Talk 98 

Road-Making loi 

Heart Culture 103 

Go Ahead 106 

The Forces of Selfishness 109 

Guide Right 112 

The Self-Made Man 114 

Duty 117 

Genius 1 19 

Vision 122 

Perseverance 125 

Knowledge 128 

Envy 130 

Be Busy 132 

Christmas is Coming 134 

The Star of Christmas 137 

Resolutions 140 



FOREWORD 

DURING the last few years we have heard 
much discussion both from platform and press 
of church decadence — the failure of the church. 
The subject has become one for both public 
debate and periodical discussion. 

I am one of those who believe in the church as 
an institution, who believe that the church has a 
function of its own that cannot be delegated — a 
purpose to fulfill. But however the individual 
may choose to align himself in this debate, if there 
be basis for controversy at all, however much he 
may make use of statistics to prove or disprove 
one argument or the other, it is an indisputable 
fact that in no land throughout the world has 
Christianity been such a great success as in 
America. Here certainly, whether individuals 
have affiliated or not with any of the denomina- 
tional divisions of Christianity, all are essentially 
Christian in character. Here a great law-abiding 
people strive to live in obedience to the simple and 
adequate creed of the Golden Rule. 

If this is true, and I believe it is, we are all of 
us thinking in simple, self-evident truths. Many 
of us do not take the time to put these expressions 
of faith and forms of conduct into words. But 



Vlll 



Foreword 



believing these simple formulas are part of the 
average mind, part of the average person's daily 
practice, part of our conviction and aspirations, 
part of our creed of conduct, I have ventured once 
a week to put a common denominator of practical 
piety into what I have called "The Saturday 
Sermonette." 

And I hereby gratefully acknowledge the very 
generous and public-spirited cooperation of the 
following gentlemen and business concerns: 



Cyrus S. Avery 

J. E. Crosbie 

J. Alexander Dingwall, Jr. 

E. B. George 

O. R. Howard 

E. R. Kemp 

J. H. Markham, Jr. 

D, B. Mason 

E. R. Perry 
Waite Phillips 
E. W. Sinclair 
J. N. Thompson 
H. F. Wilcox 
Atlantic Petroleum Co. 
Barnsdall Corporation 
Central National Bank 
Chestnut & Smith 
Constantin Refinery Co. 
Exchange National Bank 
Export Oil Corporation 
Frick-Reid Supply Co. 
GiUiland Oil Co. 
Hayner Petroleum Co. 
Hotel Tulsa 

Iron Mountain Oil Co. 



K. C. Waffle House 

Ketchum Hotel 

Lawrence Petroleum Co. 

Lynde & Darby 

McEwen Mfg. Co. 

Mid-Co. Petroleum Co. 

Minnetonka Lumber Co. 

National Exploration Co. 

Oklahoma Central Oil Co. 

Oklahoma Petroleum & Gas Co. 

Oklahoma Producing & Refining Co. 

Producers & Refiners Corporation 

Public Service Corporation 

Pure Oil Co. 

Rice & Lyons 

Skelly Oil Co. 

Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. 

Tidal Oil Co. 

Tuloma Oil Co. 

Tulsa Mill & Lumber Co. 

Tulsa Street Ry. Co. 

U. S. Compression Inner Tube Co. 

D. D. Wertzberger Co. 

West, Sherman, Davidson & Moore 



These friends generously expanded the useful- 
ness of the Sermonette by contributing for a year 
a page of church advertisements which in a page 



Foreword 



border pictured the church edifices of our city 
and weekly announced the pulpit program of each. 
These announcements formed a frame in which the 
Saturday Sermonette was featured. Through this 
private generosity the Sermonette has become 
more than merely a thumb-nail editorial lifted 
into "hand-set" type in the Saturday issues of 
the Tulsa Tribune; it has become an instrument 
to help further the back-to-the-church move- 
ment. Therefore my gratitude to these good 
friends who have helped to put the Sermonette 
to this larger and better use. 



Richard Lloyd Jones. 



Tulsa, Oklahoma, 
January lo, 1921. 



PATHFINDERS 

AND OTHER 

Saturday Sermonettes 



PATHFINDERS 

CULTURE often makes cowards of the best 
of men. It tends to bind their thoughts to 
the triumphs of the past rather than to the pos- 
sible achievements of the future. It makes them 
slaves to established codes. It throws a cloud of 
suspicion over innovation. It makes them afraid 
of a new idea. 

They were the scholars of Athens who fed 
Socrates poison. They were the scholars of Italy 
who lit the fagots at the feet of Savonarola. The 
wise men of Spain jeered at Columbus. Cultured 
England laughed at Darwin. Schooled scientists 
scoffed at Harvey's theory of blood circulation, 
at Watt's tea kettle engine, at Whitney's machine 
that could sew, at Daguerre's sun picture, at 
Wells' anaesthetics, at Morse's telegraph, at Bell's 
telephone and at Edison's talking machine. A 
quarter of a century ago a professor of physics 
at the University of California "proved abso- 

1 



Pathfinders and Other 



lutely" that it was a physical impossibility for 
man to fly. But the Wright boys showed that 
this professor was a slave to his culture. 

Every great triumph in the world's history has 
fought its way over the boundaries of temporary 
failure and gained its goal in spite of the scoffs 
of the "cultured." 

Society's pet is seldom a prophet. True talent 
is discovered tardily. To possess all the accumu- 
lated knowledge of the past does not make a man 
great. We are measured not by our accumula- 
tions but by our contributions. The brains that 
are remembered are those which had not knowledge 
but the patience and the confidence to pursue 
unabated a great plan or purpose and create 
knowledge. 

Because a fellow is doing something different 
from what has been done, don't be too quick to 
call him crazy. Time may make you the bigger 
fool of the two for having rejected his idea before 
understanding it. 

It's the fellow who sails a new sea who discovers 
a new shore. It is the fellow with originality whom 
the world most needs. 

If a man's faith in his new scheme can stand the 
acid test of the unthinking sneer, he may live to 
benefit the world. The fellow who is afraid to 
depart from convention, and who is afraid to do 



Saturday Sermonettes 



something different for fear he may be laughed at, 
is a craven no matter how much he may know. 

The men and women who acquire knowledge 
that they may be respectable, who look to the 
past that they may be comfortable in the present, 
without any thought of duty to the future, who 
study merely for the mental gymnastics of 
training their minds and who are afraid to use 
the mind when trained, are about as effective as 
an army which has learned to march by marking 
time. 

Learn not only to fill your head but to use your 
head. Don't be afraid to beat out a new path. 
The beaten paths are overcrowded. 

The pioneer's path is always hard but it is the 
pioneer who finds new fields and new benefits and 
whom in the end the world most honors. 



Pathfinders and Other 



LAW 

IT has become the custom to decorate costly 
courthouses with pediments, and court cham- 
bers with mural paintings which picture the jus- 
tice of law. It has long been the custom to sur- 
mount courthouses with the symbolic figure of 
Justice blindfolded and with scales in hand. All 
this means that the recognized purpose of law is 
justice. 

The lawyer who practices his high profession 
for the purpose of acquiring advantage rather 
than of establishing justice is not a lawyer but a 
shyster. A shyster may wear good broadcloth, 
move in so-called good society; he may be ever so 
well educated; he may be skilled as an orator; 
but he is none the less a cancer in the legal pro- 
fession. For law is not law if it violates the prin- 
ciples of justice. And he who warps it into serving 
injustice commits a crime against the society 
which creates law. 

Law is the enlightened reason of the state. 
The state is the people — it is never a person. The 
state creates no laws for the benefit of a single 
individual. The state creates laws for the benefit 
of all individuals. And the laws which endure 
are those which re^ch the highest perfection of 
reason. Those which do not reach this perfection 



Saturday Sermonettes 



have to give way to those that do. Hence laws 
change. 

The lawyer who looks upon law as a fetish 
and who would bind the present by the limitations 
of the past dishonors the profession he claims. 

As the manners, customs and morals of the 
times make laws, so must laws, if they are true to 
society, change as the manners, customs and 
morals of men change. 

The best use and practice of laws is to teach 
men to lay aside bad and outgrown laws, for laws 
cease to be good when they cease to be reasonable. 

Men of honor respect laws because laws are 
designed to respect honor. It is only the rogues 
who feel the restraint of law. And it is only the 
rogues in the profession of law who seek to upset 
justice through devotion to petty technicalities 
instead of trying to fulfill the clear intent of the 
law. 

True laws are the bulwarks of liberty. They de- 
fine every man's rights and defend the just liber- 
ties of all men. When law is destroyed, then is 
liberty lost. 

He that is within the law finds law to be his 
bes.t friend; he that is without the law finds law 
to be his worst enemy. 

Just laws are always born of the spirit of uni- 
versal love. 



Pathfinders and Other 



"The law," declared Daniel Webster, "honors 
us, may we honor it." 

The lawyer as the layman who honors law most 
is he who, keeping within the law, refuses to mark 
time but forces it forward, abreast of the vanguard 
of human progress. 



Saturday Sermonettes 



THRIFT 

IN one of his poems Thomas Hood says, "Evil 
Is wrought by want of thought as well as by 
want of heart." 

History was once described by a distinguished 
French statesman as a record of the world's great 
wrongs. 

Heaven knows the world has been filled with 
trouble enough. There have been crimes of lust 
and anger, jealousy and revenge, malice and envy, 
greed and hate. To all this must be added the 
crimes too seldom recorded, too often overlooked, 
the crimes of carelessness, thoughtlessness, lack 
of planning, want of thrift. 

How often have we heard the Failures excused 
on the apology, "Well, he Is good-hearted, any- 
way." The man who lives without plan Is Idle- 
hearted. Negative goodness cannot be catalogued 
as a virtue. Positive purpose has system. System 
is the door step to the house of profit. System Is 
moral. It matters not what the profit is. It may 
be money or wisdom. System also provides for 
the use of that which It assembles. System 
does not accumulate In a heap. It Is current. 
System Is energy wisely applied. It is thrift. 

Thrift Is a composite quality. It embraces 
within itself nearly all the great virtues. It 



Pathfinders and Other 



involves industry, prudence, forethought, self- 
denial. It has no relation to meanness. 

The man who would let his grandmother starve 
for the sake of a few dollars or the father who, 
out of a self love accepts praise but denies just 
encouragement to a striving son, is neither wise 
nor thrifty. A virtue carried to excess becomes a 
vice. True thrift is as nicely balanced as a chem- 
ist's scale. 

The thrift that does not take into partnership 
honesty of character develops into covetousness 
and avarice. 

Thrift is the opposite of prodigality, improvi- 
dence and waste. 

Thrift means better homes and better food 
and clothes, more comfort and enjoyment, less 
waste and anxiety. 

It is true that a large proportion of the people 
have earnings so small that saving seems impos- 
sible. But this is no reason for their being un- 
thrifty. On the contrary it is the very reason for 
their making the most out of that which they have. 

Just good nature and that alone will not insure 
either health or happiness, nor will it lead to the 
road of knowledge. 

The humble log cabin on Knoll creek was no 
handicap to Lincoln because he possessed the vir- 
tue of thrift. He measured with care both his 



Saturday Sermonettes 



time and his talents. He invested with conscien- 
tious wisdom both his heart and his intellect. 

Don't waste money. Save it and USE it when 
you do spend it. 

Don't dissipate time or energy. Hitch them to 
an orderly and well defined purpose. 

Out of such a well regulated and thrifty sys- 
tem grow confidence, quickened energies, firmer 
courage, more stalwart thought and hope, and the 
independence and self-respect that lift aimless, 
hopeless drudges up to the true manhood and 
womanhood that aspire and achieve. 

Give to life the careful planning and thought 
that evades evil. Make our own story as well as 
the world's story a record of great deeds for good. 
So may we hope to change "this mad unthrifty 
world which every hour throws life enough away 
to make her deserts kind and hospitable. " 

The way to be a builder is to be a beginner. 
There is only one way to build for the future and 
that is to begin now. The way to save is to start. 
And once started don't stop. But do not forget 
that hoarding is not thrift. The miser knows as 
little of thrift as the prodigal waster. 

True thrift means wise spending as well as wise 
saving. Use and do not abuse the spirit of saving. 
That is thrift. 



10 Pathfinders and Other 

ARE YOU EDUCATED? 

THE best college is not measured by endow- 
ment. It is measured by the men and women 
it turns out. The test of culture is the ability to 
serve, the power of giving not getting, of helping 
not hindering. 

The college will ofttimes pass a man the world 
will quickly flunk. Many men have been hon- 
ored in college who have been dishonored by soci- 
ety because with all their high gradings in classes 
they had not learned how to march with the 
masses. 

The college is a starter but it never completes 
the education job. Your education does not end 
when you pick up your diploma. That is when it 
just begins. That is why graduation day is 
Commencement Day. 

Many of the best educated people got their 
education without the help of college courses. 
Test yourself. If you can honestly answer "yes" 
to all the questions that follow you are indeed 
educated even though you never heard of Xeno- 
phon's Anabasis and never owned a parchment 
encased in a tin tube. 

Has education given you sympathy with all 
good causes and made you espouse them? 

Has it made you public spirited ? 



Saturday Sermonettes 11 

Have you learned to make friends and keep 
them ? 

Do you know what it is to be a friend your- 
self? 

Can you look an honest man or pure woman 
straight in the eye? 

Do you see anything to love in a little child ? 

Will a lonely dog follow you in the street? 

Can you be high-minded and happy in the 
meaner drudgeries of life? 

Do you think washing dishes and hoeing corn 
as compatible with high thinking as dancing or 
golf? 

Are you good for anything to yourself? 

Can you be happy alone ? 

Can you look out on the world and see anything 
except dollars and cents? 

Can you be a brother to your neighbor? 

Have you a better ambition than merely "to 
make your pile?" 

Have you formed the habit of hoping that you 
may help others and thereby leave this old world 
a little better than you found it? 

Do you put patriotism into your politics ? 

Do you support a public official after election 
with the same enthusiasm you show before elec- 
tion and thereby help him to fulfill his pre- 
election promises? 



12 Pathfinders and Other 

Can you read the history that is written in the 
rocks that boldly shoulder the broad current and 
bend the river in its course? 

Does the mountain lift you nearer heaven and 
the sea lead you in silent prayer? 

Can you look into a mud puddle by the way- 
side and see a clear sky? 

Can you see anything in the puddle but mud ? 

Can you look into the sky at night and see 
beyond the stars ? 

Can your soul claim relationship with the 
Creator ? 

How many college A. B.'s can honestly say 
"yes" to these 22 questions? If you cannot, is it 
not time to ask yourself which has failed, you or 
your college? There are many who could pass 
this examination who cannot boast of an aca- 
demic degree. 

We need more professors in our colleges who 
have the prophetic courage to ask such questions 
of their classes. 

Merely to know the parts of a bug, or the parts 
of speech is not culture. Your ability to tear a 
poem to pieces, analyze and parse it does not 
mean that you have a soul filled with the great 
eternal truths of the poets. 

To help you to conceive the purpose of life and 
to pursue that purpose is the mission of every 



Saturday Sermonettes 13 

school and college. They are to equip you with 
the tools. You are to use the tools. 

Are you educated? Study these questions, 
answer them honestly, and you yourself will 
know. 



14 Pathfinders and Other 

DARE THE IMPOSSIBLE 

IN one of Maeterlinck's wonderful stories he 
tells of a powerful man of the Middle Ages who 
conceived great plans and executed them, but 
always with difficulty. Frequently he almost 
failed, and succeeded only by superhuman effort. 
Finally he found that a secret enemy was always 
working against his most careful plans, neutral- 
izing his most strenuous exertions. 

As the years passed he determined to find and 
destroy this enemy. Life was not worth living 
with this hidden foe forever encircling him with 
difficulties. One evening he went out for a walk. 
He saw another man approaching him. By that 
strange instinct which warns us of danger he 
knew that this man was his life-long enemy. He 
resolved to kill him. 

As he approached, he observed that this man 
wore a mask. But, conscious that this was the 
antagonist of his life, he said as they met: "You 
are the man who from my youth till now has 
been pursuing me, thwarting me, almost defeat- 
ing me. I mean to kill you but I will give you 
a chance for your life. Draw and defend your- 
self." 

The stranger said as he drew his sword, "I am 
at your service, but first see who it is that you 



Saturday Sermonettes 15 

would fight." He removed his mask and the 
man stood — before himself. 

This fable is true of every one of us. Where 
you think an enemy has injured you, look closely 
and nine times out of ten you will find yourself 
in some evil guise. But most often you will find 
yourself in the form of your habits. 

It is a common practice to blame the world 
and not ourselves for our failings. Look deep 
enough and you will usually find that it is not the 
world that stands in your way but you yourself. 

If there is any evil in us, bad habits will develop 
it. And there is evil in all of us. Put your strength 
to the test, but never your weakness. Dare to try 
the apparently impossible tasks if they are tasks 
for good; never fear failure — all the world loves a 
good loser; and when you fail in the right, your 
defeat is only the beginning of final victory. 

Day by day civilization is demanding more of 
each one of us— more that is pure and strong. 
Twentieth century society tolerates no weakness, 
no taint in individual workers. Today every 
man must be above suspicion. Each one of us 
must be proof against calumny. Everybody is 
lied about — sometimes by envy, sometimes by 
ignorance. Never resent a falsehood about your- 
self — after all it is a test of your reputation. 
Let your life, not your words, be your rebuke to 



16 Pathfinders and Other 

slander. You defeat yourself when you stoop 
to the slanderer's low level. 

Noble living is all the armor you need to wear. 
Silence is the most eloquent answer that can be 
made to the slanderer and it is the sure search- 
light that will reveal the slanderer's shame and 
put him in complete disrepute. 

Be so true to yourself that you never need to 
fear yourself and you will never need to fear the 
world. 



Saturday Sermonettes 17 

THE GOOD OF TROUBLE 

A MISSIONARY was urging a lazy heathen to 
arouse and do. 

"Why trouble myself?" 

"If you work you can make money." 

"What for.?" 

"With money you can buy property, enlarge 
your life and become a great man." 

"What for?" 

" Why — why, then you will be happy. " 

"But I'm happy now," returned the heathen. 

The tropics are full of optimism of this sort. 
That's why there's nothing doing there. There 
is too much comfort and sunshine. It takes fog 
and rain and snow to make men hustle. 

Adversity is the anvil on which is wrought the 
iron of constructive and enduring good. 

It is a mistake to suppose we ought always to be 
selfishly happy and free from personal trouble. We 
need the stimulant of adversity that we may be use- 
ful not alone to ourselves but to others. Personal 
happiness is the reaction, pleasant but temporary. 

The human heart has strange appetites. It 
must have its sorrows, its tragedies and tears and 
bitter herbs. 

Like the old woman who "loves our murders" 
in the newspapers, we want blood in our novels. 



18 Pathfinders and Other 

That is not because we love wrong but because 
we love to see wrong righted. 

We like the play because we want to see wick- 
edness redressed and the right win. 

We like preachers who give us something more 
stimulating than sermons on complacency and 
contentment. We cannot learn how to guide right 
unless we learn how to redress wrong. We want 
to strengthen ourselves so that we dare face 
wrong and fight it to defeat, leaving the world 
better than we found it. 

It is the active life and not the passive life, the 
militant goodness and not the passive negative 
goodness that brings to us the life beautiful. 

To glaze over the wrongs of the world by try- 
ing to deny that they exist is a manifestation of 
either ignorance or intellectual laziness. To face 
the sorrows and wrongs of the world, to acknowl- 
edge them and to labor and sacrifice to correct 
them is the road to both helpfulness and happiness. 

We all want pleasure. But we are too often 
mistaken as to what pleasure really is. Happi- 
ness is never really known unless it comes through 
the school of trouble. 

The parched land on the desert lifts the thorn- 
covered cactus into radiant bloom in grateful 
recognition of the wonderful light that warms the 
world. 



Saturday Sermonettes 19 

As we pick our path we shun the mud but we 
pause to love the Hly. Let us not forget that it is 
the warm muck that makes the Hly flower. 

The test of culture is the ability to cultivate 
your sorrows into joys, and to make life blessed 
by enriching the soil of service. That is the way 
to make the world good. 



20 Pathfinders and Other 



EVE'S OTHER CHILDREN 

ACCORDING to one old Syrian legend, after 
-/jL Eve was driven from the Garden of Eden, 
she had a large number of little ones. And one day 
by the shining in the sky she knew the Lord was 
coming. Frantically the woman worked to make 
her children presentable. The time was short, so 
she washed and cleaned the pretty, the strong and 
the happy ones. The lame, the blind and the halt, 
the ugly she hid away in a cave below the earth 
and bade them be very quiet while God was there. 

And the Lord came and viewed the pretty chil- 
dren. And then He said: ''Woman what hast 
thou done?" 

And Eve trembled. 

And then the Lord said: "Thou hast brought 
sorrow into the world for all time to come. Already 
these pretty ones have forgotten that those thou 
hast hidden are their brothers and sisters. Already 
they think themselves the salt of the earth. And 
those others — thou hast consigned them to dark- 
ness and toil and sorrow. Always, because of 
thy deed, there will be those who have plenty and 
dwell in the sunshine; and Eve's other children 
forgotten, sitting in places of gloom, toiling, 
moiling, they and their children and their chil- 
dren's children." 



Saturday Sermonettes 21 

Thus the legend. 

For centuries its truth has held good. Always 
there have been Eve's children, born to the light 
and Eve's other children, seemingly born to the 
shadow. And the children of light have always 
sought to make their light brighter, regardless 
of the fact that in so doing they make the shadows 
darker for Eve's other children. 

Thus has caste grown up. Thus has special 
privilege come into being. Thus has the perni- 
cious doctrine of property rights become fixed 
as opposed to human rights. 

But there is sign of a change. No longer shall 
Eve's children have all the sunshine and joy. 
Eve's other children are at last awake. They are 
claiming their just share of the good things. And 
justice will come to those who work and the 
workers can no longer be hidden in the cave. 
They are demanding an equal chance with the rest. 

Blind justice must no longer be blind simply 
to the claims of the weak or those forced into the 
recess. Laws must not be uniform only in their 
treatment of the strong. The law must be for all, 
the light for all, opportunity for all, justice for all. 

In other words, this whole struggle we are 
seeing is to put all these children back on a like 
basis. It's going to take time and labor but — 
it's going to happen. 



22 Pathfinders and Other 

Nor shall the children who were put in the cave, 
when they come out, force the strong children 
into the cave. All shall be rewarded who work. 
But reward shall be the wage for work. And work 
shall not be the lot of only part of Eve's children, 
nor shall reward be for part of Eve's children. Jus- 
tice will come when all of Eve's children shall be 
out in the open, in the light, with equal oppor- 
tunity for all, and there are no "other children." 



Saturday Sermonettes 23 

WASHINGTON 

WHEN our east coast colonies looked upon 
the Alleghanies and the Appalachians as "the 
rough country of the far west," when they became 
the theatre in which were staged the bold events 
that threw a crown out of a hemisphere, George 
Washington became the leading actor. Out of that 
immortal band of worthy players, he became the 
worthiest. He was the bravest among the brave in 
war, one of the wisest among the wise in peace, 
a hero not alone of his country but of the world, 
a hero not alone of his own time but of all time. 

When the scales of war in which were poised 
the glory of the British crown and the liberties 
of a new democracy sank low the hopes of an 
American republic, and the black ensign of despair 
hung over a new world, Washington alone ad- 
vanced the flag of courage. 

As a warrior he was always cautious, ^et unex- 
pectedly bold. He "played safe" only as far as 
was consistent with rapid action. Unlike the 
great Corsican, Washington showed military skill 
equal to building up a great nation but never 
was he an hour tardy, behind the wakeful watch- 
fulness of the enemy thereby effecting his own 
undoing and his country's destruction. In every 
crisis Washington was THERE. 



24 Pathfinders and Other 

Before the dark angry waters of the Delaware, 
he heard not the storm but his country's call. 
Unlike the great army chiefs of the old world, 
his cause was not domination; he sought no glory 
on a throne, no court built upon infamy and the 
execration of mankind. 

His heart softened to the rigors of war; he 
mourned in the field of victory; he wept over the 
captive spy while his firm hand sanctioned the 
warrant of death. 

Ardent and intrepid as Caesar in the field, in 
camp he kneeled, a humble suppliant to the God 
of all righteous armies. 

At Yorktown he closed a war as glorious to 
himself as to the cause he had won. His army 
had come to believe that he could do no wrong. 
His soldiers so loved him that many beseeched 
him to accept a crown, the very thing he had 
fought to down. Unlike Caesar he thought little 
of himself, much of his people, little of his honors, 
much of his ideals. Love of country was his 
passion. He was the magistrate who knew no 
glory but his country's good. 

"He seemed to be the father of the multi- 
tude," declared one of his soldiers. While another 
at his death said, "Though our first thanks 
are due to God, we must gratefully remember 
Washington, the first among human benefactors." 



Saturday Sermonettes 25 

Though the country he fathered has attempted 
to honor him by naming its capital after him — 
though we have built the highest monument in 
the world to his memory, we are untrue to our 
heritage if we love liberty less than did he, If we 
selfishly seek our own advantage against human- 
ity's good, or if we be less willing to use the 
sword when it Is the only means left to defend 
the liberties he left us. 

There is but one way for every American to 
honor Washington and that is — even though we 
cannot be as great — we must strive to be as good. 



26 Pathfinders and Other 

SUNSHINE 

IIGHT is the symbol of life. If, when the 
^ world is in shadow, man wishes to signal the 
existence of life he holds up a light. 

The locomotive throws ahead of it a stream 
of light which heralds the coming of a great, 
throbbing thing.- 

Light is the most wonderful of all visible things 
because it makes all things visible. 

Light is the great painter. Red, green, blue 
and yellow are one in darkness; they are different 
things in light. Light beautifies. "There is no 
object," says Emerson, "so foul that intense light 
will not make it beautiful. " 

As light is the symbol of life, so also is dark- 
ness the symbol of death. We choose the day 
through which to live; the night through which 
to sleep. 

Fill your life with light; don't be a dead one. 
Tear away from your window the shutters of 
anger, hatred, envy, jealousy and fancied wrongs. 
Let in the sunshine. The world wastes little 
time upon the fellow who stands in the shadow 
of pessimism and gloom. Go into the sunshine 
business. Radiate happiness; it pays. 

The face that is full of the sunshine spirit not 
only helps itself but helps all who encounter it. 



Saturday Sermonettes 27 

just as the flower of the field is brightened by the 
morning sun. Be like the sun. Spread your 
happiness everywhere; give it to everybody. It is 
the most wholesome and helpful of all contagions. 

The sun is always at work. It molds the flower 
into fruit. You cannot be filled with sunshine and 
be idle. The sunny spirit is always busy at some 
unselfish service. It goes through life building a 
chain, each link of which represents a day of help- 
ful endeavor. 

To make ourselves sunny we must make our- 
selves worthy. Our worth is measured not by 
ourselves but by others. 

The sun would be of little use to this world 
were it shut up within curtains, its warmth and 
light kept to itself. So with you, you can do no 
good when you do only for yourself. He who 
thinks only of and works only for himself dies 
unloved. He has spread no sunshine about him. 
He has given no heart warmth to the world. 

Real cheerfulness is not merely a matter of 
inheritance; it is more than a passive virtue. 
The most sunny are the most strenuous, they who 
do most, give most, help most. 

Throw sunshine on all the paths you walk and 
cross in life. The world is always better for being 
bright and warm. 



28 Pathfinders and Other 

THE OPEN MIND 

PRECEDENT and prejudice are the principal 
obstructions to progress. The latter, is an 
unmitigated hindrance; the former has a value 
which it loses only through slavish devotion to it. 

To hold righteous respect for the past is a vir- 
tue; to bind the future to the limitations of the 
past is a weakness and a wrong. 

The very precedent we are often prone to wor- 
ship was at one time new. The world is advanced 
by those who make precedent rather than by those 
who follow. 

The great masters of art are not those who 
copy, but those who create. So with all things. 

The marvelous moment of existence, be it in 
thought, plan, invention, or living creature, is 
birth. Then it is that it is new. 

The man who is up to the times must be a little 
ahead of the times. He cannot be afraid of adven- 
ture or chary of that which is new. They contribute 
to progress who bring into the world new ideas, new 
visions, new instruments, and new structures. 

Day after day we may deal with the same 
things and work in established ways, but we do 
these things best when we constantly seek to 
approach our work from new viewpoints. Look 
at your job constantly from new angles. Only in 



Saturday Sermonettes 29 

that way will your job grow. You will find both 
elements and opportunities that you never sus- 
pected, possibilities of which you never dreamed. 
Train your mind to discover. Be open to con- 
viction. Court counsel. Even the people with 
whom you come in constant contact may hold 
within them surprising wells of priceless inspira- 
tion. 

Worth asserts itself in things new. Personal 
growth and success depend upon one's willing- 
ness to be open-minded; to eagerly reach after 
new things. Always seize upon and use the best 
whether it be old or new, but do not despise the 
new because it has not been tried. Try it. Only 
by trying is the good in new things proven. 

Don't let your life be held fast in the vise of 
prejudice. Get loose. Go on the still hunt for the 
new; you will grow strong in the pursuit. "New 
occasions teach new duties. Time makes ancient 
good uncouth," said the progressive Lowell. 

Had we been bound by precedent the torch 
would never have been laid aside for the candle, 
nor the candle for the incandescent lamp. So 
with ideas, instruments and institutions. 

Think in terms of tomorrow rather than of 
yesterday. Who ever saw an engineer drive a fast 
express by looking behind .f* Be like the engineer: 
look ahead; and go ahead. 



30 Pathfinders and Other 

THE LIFE APART 

NOTHING has contributed more to the prob- 
lems of capital and labor, to embittered rela- 
tions between employer and employee than physi- 
cal, mental and moral distances — the distances 
that strain the elastic cords of human sympathy 
until they snap. 

The curse of Ireland, as the whole world knows, 
has been the ABSENT landlord. 

So with our great business and industrial 
concerns; they who own and control these huge, 
human machines live in a different world from 
those who toil. The captain of industry who 
has not encountered labor difficulties is he who 
is always accessible to his workers, who is within 
hail of his men, who knows the joy of salu- 
tation and greetings exchanged. The factory 
owner who is out of reach of his men is the 
industrial operator who is first to encounter labor 
disputes. 

The directors of a great steel plant could, 
if they would, be big brothers to the shirt- 
less fellows who feed their furnaces. But be- 
cause they choose not to know these shovelers, 
these men standing at the coal pits feel only a 
great, but inhuman power driving them from 
behind. 



Saturday Sermonettes 31 

"Aristocracy is always cruel," declared Wen- 
dell Phillips. Acquaintance is the secret of peace- 
ful human relations. 

"Don't introduce me to that man," once said 
a famous politician. "I feel it my political duty 
to hate him, and you can't hate a man when you 
know him." 

All men possess more good than bad. You 
cannot really KNOW a man but that over and 
above all his faults you are compelled to like 
him. 

Frenchmen like Frenchmen because they live 
together; they disliked Englishmen only because 
they live apart. When a common cause gave 
the common battle and they were thrown together, 
comrades in a common column, then they came to 
know each other. Through fellowship they found 
fraternity. 

Whatever kind of a worker you are, however 
high grade a workman you may be, if you are a 
workman be a fellow workman. Fellowship is the 
world's great need. Fellowship is the foe of dis- 
cord and war. 

Riches are good when they help to cement 
and bind; they are bad when they separate a man 
from his fellows. The spirit of exclusiveness is the 
deepest insult you can give the world. Riches 
multiply rather than lessen responsibility. 



32 Pathfinders and Other 

Labor hates the mill owner who demands divi- 
dends by telegraph and wants his responsibili- 
ties delivered by ox-cart. 

Wisdom grows in this good old world and we 
are beginning to be wise enough to recognize a 
murderer even though he be a wireless sinner who 
murders at long distance. Guilt does not always 
rest singly upon the outraged and outworn mind 
and body that feels the heavy pressure of a hand 
it cannot see. 

The Great Master who moved amongst us 
nineteen hundred years ago tried to teach us to 
live near, for one another. To live apart, to be for- 
getful is sin. It is a denial of Him. In denying 
Him we deny ourselves. There are no riches in 
this world so priceless as the wealth of friendships. 



Saturday Sermonettes 2,3, 

GOOD HUMOR 

IAUGHTER has often been called the most 
-^ infectious thing in the world. It is also the 
most antiseptic. Nothing is more wholesome 
than the insight and the eye-sight that see the 
funny side of things. The soul who enters life 
equipped with a generous fund of good humor is 
practically immune from the corrosion of cark- 
ing care. 

The organ of good nature is governed by vol- 
untary muscles. Good humor is not alone a gift; 
it is an attainment; it can be cultivated; it is a 
state you can wish and will yourself into. Turn 
the corners of your mouth up and the world 
looks vastly better than when seen with the 
corners of the mouth turned down. 

Cultivate sanitary ideas and you will acquire 
the antiseptic good nature. 

Protect yourself against taking yourself too 
seriously. Do not judge your mission too tragi- 
cally. 

Think also of the other fellow. Acquire a 
healthy interest in your neighbor. Find sympathy 
with his aspirations. Good humor and good fel- 
lowship are inseparable partners. Good humor 
begets sympathy. Keep the mind turning out- 
ward and the mouth corners turning upward and 



34 Pathfinders and Other 

you are reasonably sure of a comfortable voyage 
through troubled waters. 

Good humor is warm. It fosters a sympathetic 
fellow feeling with all forms of life. 

True humor is born not so much in the brain 
as in the heart. Its essence is love. Its best 
expression is not in laughter, but in the still under- 
standing smile that lies far deeper. 

The soul that owns good humor is equipped 
with both ornament and armor. 

The command of humor does much to distin- 
guish men, and ofttimes makes men distinguished. 

The philosophers who have lightened the most 
burdens and illuminated the most paths in this 
perplexed world are they who have reached their 
readers through the appeal of good humor. For 
it is humor, tender and all embracing that, as the 
sunshine, lifts the shadows out of dark places and 
brightens the way for those who could not clearly 
see. It is the open sesame to human hearts. 



Saturday Sermonettes 35 



EASTER 

CHRIST did not stop at Calvary. He carried 
on. He is the greatest force in the world 
today. The advance of each century is marked 
by a new interpretation and a truer application 
of His teaching. The contribution of the twen- 
tieth century will be the invasion of His spirit 
into industry. The Golden Rule is becoming 
the living creed. 

The resurrection is symbolic of the moral 
order of the world, expressed through the tran- 
scendent character of Jesus. This controlling 
spirit of the world moves as nature through the 
cycles of birth and death. The parable of the 
seed needs no repeating. 

The greatest movements of man follow its 
symbolism. Out of the darkness and oppres- 
sion of the seventeenth century sprang religious 
liberty; the Pilgrim fathers braved the perils and 
hardships of an unknown land because, through- 
out the known world, liberty was dead. Through 
their suffering and sacrifice it was resurrected. 

"Immortality," said Channing, "is the glorious 
discovery of Christianity." 

And Henry Ward Beecher told us that "The 
Easter spirit is the manifest truth of our trust 
that nothing good is ever lost." 



36 Pathfinders and Other 

The story of the Resurrection is the story of the 
eternal Hfe; it is the story of the unending growth 
of good. Nothing good ever dies. 

The monuments of nations are all protests 
against nothingness after death. We mold into 
statues the images of our great because they 
live; we chisel into hardest stone the words of 
masters whose military spirit goes marching on. 
History is the story of the unending triumphs 
of the great. Only to the pessimist and to the 
opponent of progress is the immediate absolute. 
He does not feel life in death or fulfillment in 
denial. 

In every child there is born the Easter promise. 
The mother invests in it the hope of a great good. 
It is the nursing of that hope that fulfills the 
Easter faith, that advances the world, that 
prompts us to follow in His steps. 

Life is always new; life is eternal. And the 
Christ lesson never stops; it goes on, forever on; 
and out of new occasions it teaches new duties. 
Each new birth and each new religious emotion, 
no matter how ancient or honored may be the 
church whence it comes, must if true to the ever- 
lasting Christ, find new conscious and social 
expression. It is the Creator's way; we must be 
obedient to the divine law. Nature is bent on 
perfecting herself. 



Saturday Sermonettes 37 

The spirit of Easter is the spirit of awakening 
of renewed Hfe, of inspiration and of high resolve. 
It is the symbol of progress; it is the call to do 
and to build the good things taught by the 
Master. To do less is to lose the Easter lesson, 
to worship a star, forgetting the sun by whose 
light it shines. 



38 Pathfinders and Other 

WORK 

NO job is so difficult and none so dishearten- 
ing as that of avoiding work. The idler is 
the man above all others to be pitied. 

Work is for the living. He who avoids work 
never lives for he never comes to know the joy of 
doing, the contentment that comes from creating, 
the glory of serving; nor does he know the luxury 
of recreation and relaxation, for without work 
there is no rest. 

Repose is not the aim of life. Work is the aim; 
repose the pay. 

The universal cure for misery is work, for it gives 
a strength both to the body and to the mind. 

Every man wants to think that he is worth 
something. No man can know what he is worth 
without work. Work is the test. The man who 
is afraid to work will find that in the end it pays 
better to work out than to rust out. 

The man who avoids work because he wants 
tranquillity of mind will find that he has lost the 
capacity to work when that tranquillity comes, 
for tranquillity comes only through work. 

Man's record in this world is the record of his 
work, not of his recreation. 

Work is man's noblest expression. All men wish 
to be noble. All men wish to leave a record. 



Saturday Sermonettes 39 

Therefore even they who are idle feign work; 
they wish, at least, to appear as workers. 

Genius is sometimes looked upon as a God- 
given means of making a record without work. 
However God-given genius may be, it never 
accomplishes anything without work. The men of 
greatest genius have always been amongst the 
most plodding, hard working and intent, — their 
chiefest genius being their genius for work. It is 
men of their kind who know that no true work is 
menial. They who look upon their work as menial 
are they who fail to invest in that work the 
patience, persistence, and power which lifts them 
above it. 

But with all this, work alone is not living. 
It is the means of living. Man was not made for 
work; work was made for man. The man is lost 
who is servant to his work. The strong man is 
always master of his job. 

Work is an educator and he who would be 
educated always seeks work which is above him, 
to which he must grow rather than work beneath 
him to which he must descend. 

Real rest comes not through idleness, but 
through change of work. We have work to do to 
gain our bread. We have other work to do for 
our delight. Both must be done heartily, strenu- 
ously, and with a will, — else we fail. 



40 Pathfinders and Other 

POWER 

ALL men have a love of power but not an equal 
Ijl capacity to gratify it. Power is something 
more than mere energy; it is a directed force. 
Whatever tension the steam gauge on a locomo- 
tive may show, the engine is a lifeless thing with- 
out a brain-guided hand to move its throttle. 

Power is force under control. The waterfall 
is wasted energy; harnessed to a wheel it pro- 
duces mill power. 

Concentration is the secret of power. Hitch 
your energy to some fixed purpose. 

To be noble is to be powerful. Negative good- 
ness is never a contributing goodness; positive 
goodness is. Positive goodness has purpose. Ener- 
gy put to purpose is power. 

The world always makes way for the man of 
power and he makes room for many. So does real 
power direct for good. 

The men of greatest power are they who give to 
the world a spiritual rather than a material force. 

Napoleon was great because he directed his 
power to make himself a crowned master of men. 

Lincoln was greater because he used his power 
to make men masters of themselves. 

Christ was the greatest because He used His 
power to spread the glory of the Golden Rule over 



Saturday Sermonettes 41 

the world, teaching men that they serve them- 
selves best when they serve others. 

His example brings to every man, woman 
and child the simple lesson that in all the world 
there is no sweeter thing than a soft and gentle 
power which unceasingly works for the good of 
many. 

So it is that they who have the most power in the 
world are they who are most generous in heart. 

Power cannot have too gentle an expression, 
for its opponent is always weakness. 

Manhood is measured by the use made of its 
power. 

And as power is purpose, scholarship is never 
the measure of man's power. At best it is but 
a source of helpful equipment. What one WANTS 
to know is often of more value than what one 
knows. It is not what you have done that makes 
you do; it is what you WISH to do that makes 
you go on. 

There is many a college-bred man amply 
equipped with book lore who, like the locomo- 
tive, with safety valve sizzling, stands still be- 
cause he lacks purpose; he has no power to handle 
the throttle; he knows not how or where to go. 
Mere information is never knowledge unless it is 
usable, and it is usable only when it is well ar- 
ranged, concentrated and digested with power. 



42 Pathfinders and Other 

There is no strength in bread and milk until 
the stomach gives their latent forces a fixed pur- 
pose; then they translate themselves into power. 

So gain that you may give, for in giving and 
not in getting lies the secret which all men covet 
— the secret of real power. 



Saturday Sermonettes 43 

WISDOM 

COMMON sense is the usual definition for that 
mental attitude which is the opposite of rash- 
ness. Wisdom rises superior to both. 

Wisdom is always changing, always new; it is 
never constant because it is the best judgment 
of the hour. It is the interpretation of the accu- 
mulated knowledge of the past applied and di- 
rected towards the needs of the future, therefore 
that which once was wisdom may be only the 
common sense and not the uncommon sense of 
today. 

Wisdom has been called the abstract of the 
past and the promise of the future. 

Experience is the mother of wisdom as imagina- 
tion is the mother of science. Wise men draw 
their lessons from the experiments of life; they 
develop those experiments into the achievements 
of the world. 

Wisdom is seldom gained without both sacri- 
fice and suffering, for these are the component 
parts of experience. 

Wisdom comes only to those who think. One 
may know many things and still, not being a 
thinker, may miss wisdom. Wisdom consists not 
so much in the knowing of things as in the capa- 
city to choose and follow those things which con- 



44 Pathfinders and Other 

duce most surely to our lasting happiness and 
helpfulness. 

The greatest heritage which a man can bequeath 
to the world is wisdom. It is such legacies, and 
only such, that advance civilization and mark 
the forward march of time through succeeding 
generations. 

To know gives you power, hence, wise men 
are unafraid. They know that the idea that is not 
dangerous is not worthy of being tried, for every 
new effort has within it the possibility of disap- 
pointment. Wisdom advances cautiously but it 
always advances. Socrates and Savonarola, 
Jesus and Lincoln dared their wisdom against 
the world's unbelief. Men who confront the 
world with new ideas are always at bay with the 
world. 

The ideas that most benefit man are seldom 
welcomed by him on first presentation. 

Wise men are always generous and firm. They 
who lack this wisdom misunderstand both the 
generosity and the firmness of the wise. The 
mob may be moved by passion. The wise man may 
control the mob not because he banishes passion 
but because he can purify it. 

Wisdom is not a pretence; it wears no 
mask. Owls look wise as college professors some- 
times do. But true wisdom never poses; it per- 



Saturday Sermonettes 45 

forms. The world's greatest deeds have, for the 
most part, been done unknowingly. The masses 
applaud only after they have seen the worth of 
wisdom through the perspective of time. Real 
wisdom is unaffected. The reward of wisdom 
comes through the gratification of fearlessly fol- 
lowing to the end a ripe judgment and a quick- 
ened conscience. 



46 Pathfinders and Other 

FAILURE 

PROCRASTINATION is the mother of fail- 
ure. Tomorrow is never the day of achieve- 
ment. Use today; it is the instrument at hand. 
The promise to do better next time is worth but 
little; the resolution to do better now is worth 
much. To fail at all is to fail completely. But 
the false yardstick is too often applied in the 
measurement of success by a thoughtless and 
materialistic world. 

The agencies of success are wisdom, sincerity 
and fidelity. Too often we seem to fail because 
we do not know how to spin the flax God gives us 
upon the wheel we know not how to use. But no 
sincere endeavor faithfully and conscientiously 
pursued ever results in failure as failure is meas- 
ured by the better perspective of distant years. 

"However things may seem 
No good thing is failure 
No evil thing success," 

is the poet's song which carries the whole truth of 
honest efi"ort. 

The near view of things may seem to disprove 
this faith but the long measure proves it true. 
We observe the rascal reaching a position of polit- 



Saturday Sermonettes 47 

ical power. But the rascal with his misdirected 
energies passes from power, and time gratefully 
erases his name from the memory of man. It is 
the Washingtons, and Jeffersons, and Lincolns 
of history, traveling through repeated seeming 
failures and real discouragements, who triumph 
in the records of the world. 

We see about us men of great commercial 
power whose affluence inspires unworthy envy; 
who have acquired their money through energies 
neither designed nor directed to benefit others 
than themselves. If you would call their lives 
successful read the pages of history a hundred 
years later and you will find that they not only 
failed but are forgotten. 

The world does not measure success by read- 
ing what a man gets out of the world but by what 
he has given to the world. 

The Star of Bethlehem shone above a city in 
which there were rich men who had, according to 
the standard of the time, fine houses, ease and 
comfort, — men who were smart in the market and 
clever in the art of money changing. But who 
among those who were in the light of that fair 
star lives in the world today.? A Child Who was 
manger-born and Who so failed according to 
the standard of His time that He was put to 
death upon a cross. The sincere purpose and great 



48 Pathfinders and Other 



love which burned in His heart warm and light the 
whole world today. Who now will say He failed? 

In another country and in an ancient time 
surrounded with all the luxuries of a princely pal- 
ace, there was the purposeful Buddha who heard 
the cry of the suffering and who saw with sympa- 
thetic eye the sick, the aged and the over-worked. 
All the wealth of his principality could not give 
him a jolly time in the midst of such scenes. He 
gave himself to those who needed the help and 
comfort he had to give and today his name is 
worshipped while other princes of his ancient 
time are lost to the memory of man. 

So too with the stories of Socrates, of Savon- 
arola, Martin Luther; so too with Christopher 
Columbus who sailed unknown seas against the 
whole world's unbelief, even while his sailors 
planned to bring his great enterprise to swift 
decay; and so too with John Brown whose "soul 
goes marching on." 

They only fail who refuse to DO or who when 
doing refuse to do that which is for the good of 
many. 



Saturday Sermonettes 49 

MUSIC 

WHILE many interpreters see many things 
in the motifs of music, all concede it to be 
an art of both power and purpose. 

There is no truer axiom than that music is the 
universal language. 

Music is the one common denominator of all 
nations, of all races, and all creeds. It is the one 
voice to which all people listen with full con- 
tentment. 

Music may be analyzed as wild sounds refined 
into time and tune. Harmony is its exacting law. 
Emerson has called it "the poor man's Parnassus." 
It is he too who tells us that even 

" .... in the mud and scum of things 
There's always, always something sings." 

From the mire and meadow to the symphony 
orchestra and cathedral choir music is both an 
elemental and an essential part of the living world. 
It is the birds' contribution to the restful wild 
life of the woods. It tames the serpent; soothes 
the beast; and according to its mood consoles or 
stimulates man. 

Music is the element in life that makes man 
work and play and rest the better. Emotion rather 



50 Pathfinders and Other 

than thought is its sphere. But emotion mothers 
thought. Music stimulates imagination and re- 
fines reason. Next to poetry, therefore, which 
music often inspires, music becomes the mightiest 
of arts. Poetry only finds its best fulfillment 
when it is augmented by the interpretation of 
music. For poetry is the song of reason; music 
the song of the soul. The two give forth the su- 
preme appeal of both the head and the heart. 

In the truest sense music is not a study; it is a 
sympathy. True knowledge of music rests in the 
capacity to think in sounds, not the mere memoriz- 
ing of finger maneuvering. See deep enough into 
the heart of man and there as in the heart of na- 
ture you find a constant hunger for music, — a 
longing to find the discords in thought and sound 
woven into harmony. 

In its purity music may consecrate all forms 
of art by lifting them into its own atmosphere 
and there governing them, as a strong soul may 
govern the body. 

Every touch of music mellows the hardships of 
life. 

Thoreau recognized music as so great a force 
for good that he called it the arch-reformer. 
"There is something in the effect of an harmoni- 
ous voice," he declares, "upon the disposition of 
its neighborhood analogous to the law of crystals. 



Saturday Sermonettes 51 

It centralizes itself and sounds like the published 
law of things. When I hear music, I fear no 
danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am 
related to the earliest times, and to the latest." 

Music lifts out of the finite into the infinite. 

"I care not who may make a people's laws so 
long as I may write their songs," is the assertion 
known to every school child. It is an axiom burd- 
ened with a powerful political truth. Music has 
a potent power for good above and beyond the 
power of legislative halls or of courts. When all 
else fails music may reach the sensitive chamber 
of man's soul. It was music that restored reason 
to the slumbering Saul. 

Music is a leveler. It is democracy's agent. 
It appeals to all classes and reduces all classes to 
one class. Even the king pleads for his piper. 

Music is yet to be, as in some places it has al- 
ready become, the city's proudest and best gift to 
its people. Symphony orchestras and well trained 
bands are even now frequently looked upon as 
town possessions holding a greater share of the 
city's pride than Boards of Trade or boastful bank 
balances. 

"Show me a city that loves music," said the 
late Sir Edwin Arnold, "and I will show you a city 
that loves both industry and peace. " 



52 Pathfinders and Other 

THE NEW HEROISM 

CENTURIES of monarchism trained the minds 
of tribes and nations to believe that the 
noblest of trades is that of war. 

Sculpture has been largely given over to the 
artistic eulogy of the heroes of conquest. The 
warrior has long been lifted up as the model of 
nobility. Civilization, in its process of refinement, 
is teaching a nobler nobility. 

When knighthood was in flower the chief 
warrior was king, and his nobles were his killers. 
Militarism was the government of monarchism. 

Useful trades and occupations, if not quite 
degrading, were at least beneath the dignity of 
soldiery. Physical power rather than head or 
heart power was worshipped. The military in- 
stinct corrupted religion. Many still cling to the 
notion of a Czar-God, — the divine paternal power 
that must be feared, before which we crouch in 
terror and misgiving, instead of a Jesus-God with 
whom we find ourselves linked in bonds of love, 
tenderness, and helpfulness, — the God of co- 
operation and encouragement. 

The last half century has found this primitive 
militant instinct expressing itself in commercial 
terms in our own country so famous for its indus- 
trial prosperity. Men covet the compliment of 



Saturday Sermonettes 53 

"captain of industry," "king of finance," or 
"Napoleon of Trade." 

In our own political history we find written the 
story of militant and merciless commercialism 
laying hold of courts and legislative chambers as 
once the king's men stormed castle walls and cap- 
tured citadels. 

The agencies of education are bringing us the 
better light to see the better way and find the finer 
values along the way. 

Through the ages past men have coveted power 
for power's sake whether it be with spear and 
armor or with the cunning that corrals money. 
Even our colleges and universities have been 
known to lend themselves to this conscienceless 
craving for conquest and have decorated with 
degrees the donors of halls and dormitories. 

But into the twentieth century there breaks 
a new and truer light of truth. Our colleges 
are beginning to learn that even scholarship and 
scientific skill are of secondary purpose; the 
first duty of any school is to make MEN and 
WOMEN. 

Out of this comes a new order of things. The 
people once belonged to kings; now kings belong 
to the people. In this ethical evolution the real 
man is no longer the hero of conquest; success is 
measured less by what you can get than by what 



54 Pathfinders and Other 

you can give. The world Is less interested in who 
you are than in what you are. 

Commercialism is becoming the instrument of 
democracy more than that of individuals. It is 
nobler to feed and clothe and house than to kill. 
There is greater honor in helping a man to get on 
his feet than to hit him on the head and knock 
him off his feet. Society is beginning to recognize 
the heroism of the man who helps another to 
get a farm rather than of him who takes away 
the farm. 

In the new order of things laws are designed to 
help and encourage and build up the fortunes of 
the many rather than to enthrone the few. 



Saturday Sermo7iettes 55 

PERSONAL LIBERTY 

ROBINSON CRUSOE enjoyed personal lib- 
^ erty until he met Friday. Then he had to 
divide that liberty. 

England once used her island continent, Aus- 
tralia, as a dumping ground for her criminals. 
But given the privileges of personal liberty, they 
voluntarily worked out a society of law and order; 
mutual concession was their best protection. 

He who pleads for personal liberty, pleads for 
lawlessness and loneliness, for unless we obey 
society we must take the consequence which is 
isolation from society. 

Society rests not upon science, philosophy, 
religion or law; it rests upon the conscience of the 
public and the public is the majority of the people. 

Democratic rights demand at all times that 
there should be equality of conditions, — that 
is, equal chance, as the fundamental basis of 
society. 

To grant a special privilege to a railroad or to a 
woolen trust is as much a violation of the spirit 
of democracy and an attack upon society as to 
grant a special privilege to an outlaw who tries, 
with or without consent of constitutional powers, 
to disregard the obligation of individuals, singly 
or collectively. 



56 Pathfinders and Other 

Society is a republic. When an individual at- 
tempts to give himself privileges at the cost of the 
public, he at once becomes an enemy to society 
and traitor to the republic. 

No political representative of the people, chosen 
by the electorate of the people, can advance his 
own interest or his friend's interest through legis- 
lating favoritism to either a brewery or a steel 
trust, without being a traitor to the society he is 
chosen to represent. He can only advance the 
interests of that brewery and that steel trust as 
far as such advancement will be to the benefit of 
the public he is chosen to serve. And the brewery, 
be it noted, never went very far to that end. 

The public official who has asked the people 
to make him their servant, and who when elected 
to a public office labors in the interest of the 
whisky makers, whose business it is to debauch 
men, or of the sweat shop or of any other enemy 
of the public welfare, becomes not a servant of 
the people but an enemy of the people. 

Society is a contract. It is a partnership to 
advance virtue and to work mutually for per- 
fection. He who labors for personal liberty works 
for a repudiation of that contract and for an 
attack upon society. 

He who is true to society, who is true to the 
spirit of democracy, labors uncompromisingly 



Saturday Sermonettes 57 

and consistently not only for those who live but 
for those who are yet to come. 

By virtue of such loyalty to society do we find 
the march of man bringing us ever a little farther 
along the road than we were yesterday. 



58 Pathfinders and Other 



FELLOWSHIP 

HE who possesses the spirit of fellowship, 
whatever may be his confession of faith, is 
a disciple of the universal religion. Fellowship 
is fairness; fairness is the Golden Rule reduced 
to two syllables. 

Fellowship is the foundation of democracy. 
Democracy may not mean social equality but it 
does mean equal chance. Democracy must al- 
ways mean equal good will, equal hope, encour- 
agement and opportunity. Fellowship, like democ- 
racy, means giving every one a square deal. 

Democracy, through the spirit of fellowship, 
fosters philanthropy but it insists that its philan- 
thropy be real and that it be IN business rather 
than AFTER business. 

He cannot boast of the spirit of fellowship who 
amasses his fortune by paying an unfair wage to his 
toilers, and then publicly bequeaths to his city an 
uplift institution for the benefit of those who toil. 
He who disregards the rights and the welfare of those 
who work with and for him has missed the golden 
reward of fellowship which is more priceless and 
more satisfying than gold or thoughtless applause. 

The spirit of fellowship refuses to coddle beg- 
gars for the privilege of handing them soup and 
free lectures. 



Saturday Sermonettes 59 

Nor can the spirit of fellowship ever be housed 
In the heart of the gambler; fellowship Insists 
upon a square deal, — a fair trade. In a fair trade 
both parties gain; In a gambling transaction one 
must lose. Whoever engages in any trade where 
his gain means an inevitable loss to another, is 
simply a gambler. 

The manufacturer who makes a good useful 
machine profits by his business as the sales of 
his machine multiply. And because the machine 
is perfected to be true to an assignment of labor, 
every purchaser profits who buys It to put It into 
useful operation. That Is fair play and commer- 
cialized fellowship. But the fellow who makes a 
profit on misrepresentation, who sells fictitious 
stock, who inflates the valuation of his property 
with water, is false to the spirit of fellowship how* 
ever well he may wear his broadcloth, or how- 
ever piously he may kneel before the altar. Pay- 
ing a high price for a pew never puts piety into 
practice. 

In the dark ages barons went out with their 
armored retainers. They butchered, robbed and 
ravaged and out of the spoils built a church or 
endowed a benevolent institution in the name of 
the church. Yet, then as now, they are enemies 
of that real religion, the brotherhood of man, for 
which the Inspiration of the church lived and died. 



60 Pathfinders and Other 

The real criterion of a man's life is not how 
the world will be affected by his bequests, but how 
they who came in daily contact with him as friends 
and neighbors, servants and fellow-workers, were 
aifected by his life. That is the test of character, 
and character is the measure of a man's spirit of 
fellowship. 



Saturday Sermonettes 61 

HOPE 

THERE is no virtue so universal or so help- 
ful as hope. The human soul clings to it 
after having relinquished claim to all else. 

Hope is the greatest architect. It plans great 
futures. To other forces is given the power to 
realize or to disappoint. 

Hope is desire magnified. It views the distance 
as through a telescope. 

Hope lives only in the future tense. It is the 
father of ambition; it is the mother of faith. 

Hope is the prodigal draftsman whose plans 
are modified and ofttimes mutilated by experi- 
ence. 

But with all this, hope is the builder of happi- 
ness. Through its gleaming prospects and prom- 
ises youth rejoices and age finds happiness in the 
recollection of hope. 

Though the most treacherous, it is always the 
most serviceable of all human fancies. The life 
that rests its future upon a single hope assumes 
a risk as great as a ship which, in the face of 
tempest, puts its trust in one small anchor. 

Hope is a great helper, but alone it is power- 
less to perform. It must be propped up by 
other sterling virtues if its dreams are to come 
true. 



62 Pathfinders and Other 

"He that lives upon hopes alone will die fast- 
ing," said the witty Franklin. 

Human life has no surer friend though some- 
times no greater enemy than hope. It is the 
miserable man's God. Under the direst calamity 
it never fails to comfort and to prod, him on. 
To the presumptuous man who deems labor and 
patience not worth while, hope will act as a 
devil which smooths his way for a time, then sud- 
denly breaks his neck. 

Hope is liberal but stern. She readily agrees 
to do great things for you but she always insists 
that you, too, do your full part, else she will 
fail you. 

Like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, 
all else forgot in its excess, hope brings pain as the 
disappointing reward. 

Hope is a necessity. Where there is no hope 
there is no endeavor. Dilute your hopes with 
patience, purpose and practice. 

However frequently our hopes may seem to be 
frustrated no man is lost unless he extinguish 
hope. 

The man of power never leaps from pleasure 
to pleasure but from hope to hope. It is hope that 
carries us, willing toilers, to the end. 

Take hope from the heart of man and you make 
him a beast of prey; put hope into the heart of 



Saturday Sermonettes 63 

man and you put him on the high road with im- 
pulse and the possibiHties of power. 

Like the sun, hope casts the shadow of our 
burdens behind us and ever makes the future 
look better than the past. 



64 Pathfinders and Other 

IDEALISM 

AT no time in the world's history has there 
JLA. been so general a thirst for righteousness as 
there is today. With the awakening of what we 
call the civic conscience and the scientific philan- 
thropy, which scores of our highest type men and 
women are studying as a profession in the schools, 
there has come a new understanding as to our rela- 
tion to the community and an almost religious 
fervor and enthusiasm with which the ordinary 
citizen regards his task not as a means for bread- 
winning merely, but as his contribution to the 
world. 

Never before has man been able to go through 
a long and busy life with so many ideals and come 
out at the end with them all intact and untar- 
nished. 

In olden times it was from knight or saint that 
we expected our deeds of valor and humanity. 
Some of us are so accustomed to that ancient point 
of view that we are blind to the conspicuous 
courage and idealism of the ordinary men who 
surround us. 

The statesman of today lives for a larger pur- 
pose than did the statesman of yesterday. And 
he faces a stricter test. He is under the light of a 
purer ideal. 



Saturday Sermonettes 65 

The political intrigues of the last generation 
accepted without comment by our fathers, sicken 
us; and as the old order changeth the remnants of 
that order are pitiable objects, shrinking from the 
limelight of today. They need our compassion 
rather than our censure. The new ideal is their 
accuser, and we must not forget in judging them 
personally that they are the product of their 
time and that we in our era see clearer, and seeing, 
of necessity are better. 

Our conceptions of " cleverness, " '' shrewdness, " 
"business" have changed entirely from the old 
idea. The man who sells his conscience for money, 
no matter at how high a price, is condemned as 
never before. The journalist who "hires out" to 
write what he does not believe, is rated in the pub- 
lic mind with the soldier of antiquity, who be- 
trayed his country. 

William Winter, the dramatic critic, who, when 
the theater trust brought too strong pressure on 
his venal employers, gave up a position made 
famous by thirty years of truthful criticism, rather 
than betray his unsigned, unspoken compact with 
the theater-going public to tell them the truth as 
he saw it, is the type of our latter day heroes. 

And this great new idea of righteousness has 
come in the face of accusation that the church 
has failed in its work of inspiration. Perhaps the 



66 Pathfinders and Other 

church has been guilty of compromise. Perhaps 
it has lagged in its leadership and allowed the 
divine fire, which must of necessity light the way 
of human aspirations, to be seized by the hand of 
laymen. Nevertheless the procession toward ideals 
keeps up its march — steady and strong. The 
light burns clearer and brighter with each step 
forward and whosoever carries the beacon light 
that leads us on, he is the anointed of the Lord, 
be he in cassock or in overalls. 



Saturday Sermonettes 67 

CLOTHES 

IT takes a very brave or a very foolish person 
to be indifferent to clothes. They have been 
scorned by ascetics and by the indolent of all ages, 
but a thoughtful person cannot help but be deeply 
impressed by the profound and significant role 
they have played in all stages of the world's his- 
tory. 

The Old Testament from Joseph's coat of many 
colors lays due emphasis upon raiment, culmi- 
nating perhaps in the wardrobe of the Queen of 
Sheba. 

Turn back through the pages of history. How 
symbolic of gallantry to our minds are the black 
armor of the Crown Prince at Calais and the 
white plume of Henry of Navarre! How pregnant 
with meaning is Hamlet's inky suit! 

In modern times, Eugenie of France has been 
famed for the extravagance and magnificence of 
her wardrobe; yet the lack of one garment may 
have been responsible for the downfall of her 
husband's empire. When word of the surrender 
at Sedan reached Paris there was great excite- 
ment, and free talk of a revolution. Trusted coun- 
sellors advised Eugenie to appear on horseback 
before her people and proclaim her own assump- 
tion of the regency for the benefit of her son and 



68 Pathfinders and Other 

the appointment of M. Thiers as prime minister. 
Good advice! But, alas, in all those well-stocked 
wardrobes no riding habit was to be found. Hunt- 
ing costumes there were in plenty, of vivid color- 
ing and heavy with gold and silver embroidery — 
just the garments to further inflame a mob that 
was already athirst for democracy. So the plan 
was given up and an empire fell — perchance for 
the lack of a riding habit. 

In his dramas Shakespeare gives us many 
evidences of his consciousness of the importance 
of clothes. His advice as to dressing as voiced in 
Polonius' parting injunction to Laertes is death- 
less and as true today as when he wrote it: 

"Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy 
But not expressed in fancy, rich not gaudy, 
For the apparel oft proclaims the man." 

Carlyle, perhaps the deepest thinker of modern 
times, has given us the monumental work, " Sar- 
tor Resartus" — all on the significance of clothes. 
"What is man without covering," says he, "but 
a forked radish?" True, as his theme develops, 
his conception of clothes broadens far from mere 
wearing apparel; but in that subject alone, the 
destruction it engenders, and caste feeling it evokes, 
he finds rich materials for his ripest philosophy. 



Saturday Sermonettes 69 

Clothes are a great exponent of character. 
The colorless, unimaginative person follows blind- 
ly the dictates of fashion, but independent people 
trust their own ideas as to clothing. Take our 
American statesmen who have adopted the free 
and easy sombrero of the West, and note how 
becoming such headgear is to their characters. 
They revel in the consummate joy of self-expression. 

Louisa M. Alcott knew human nature when 
she said that to know her dress set well in the back 
gave more spiritual comfort to a woman than the 
finest sermon. That our modern story writers are 
not oblivious of the fact is shown wherever on 
stage or in modern fiction, a neglected wife is to 
emerge from obscurity or a forlorn maiden aunt to 
burst her chrysalis and blossom forth as a heroine. 
Then we have always minute descriptions of a 
shopping trip and the spiritual and physical regen- 
eration that comes with new clothes. 

The ease of manner, the love of your fellow- 
man, the joy of living generally, that you expe- 
rience when becomingly attired, is a condition 
that repays thought. 



70 Pathfinders and Other 

LEADERSHIP 

SENIOR classes In all the colleges and high 
schools are now on what might be called the 
home stretch of their academic careers. After 
their concluding theses, examinations and cele- 
brations they face the world; they confront a world 
that needs men and women trained in mind and 
body but they confront a world which needs, above 
all else, leaders. 

Every business enterprise, every political party 
in town, county, state or nation, every political 
and economic idea, every branch of scientific en- 
deavor and every religious movement looks to a 
leader. 

Every senior faces a world filled with oppor- 
tunities; but it is only the leaders who ever have 
reached or who ever can reach their goal. They 
who follow never get there. It is easy to be a 
follower; it takes hero stuff to be a leader. Cow- 
ards never lead. Only they with courage can. 
Patience and persistence are the other two primal 
qualifications for leadership in any field of en- 
deavor. Leadership exacts fairness to others, and 
confidence in oneself. No man can lead another 
who doubts himself. 

Many a student before he reaches his senior 
year has learned how to concentrate and apply his 



Saturday Sermonettes 71 

own mind; he has learned how to acquire; he has 
stored power in himself. But he may do all this 
and be a pathetic failure in the world. High class- 
room standing never made any man great. That 
which does make a man great is the power to give 
others power. 

Just to think out an idea will never advance the 
idea. Not until you have thought out and then 
fought out the idea have you made a contribu- 
tion to the world. Columbus could not prove in 
Spain that the world was round. To do this he 
had to take disbelievers with him and with them 
fight the vast seas. 

Darwin thought out the idea of world creation 
and evolution as he observed the sluggish forms 
of lower life on the teeming banks of the Amazon. 
But he spent a decade to convince himself that he 
had found a truth, then he fought through a full 
and busy life to convince the world that the truth 
he found was of use to the world. 

Resolve to do something, then find something 
to do. If it be something new make it of use to 
many. By so doing you take your place among the 
leaders of men. If it be something old and tried 
that you do, do it better than it was ever done be- 
fore, and by so doing show others how best to do 
it. Then again you lead. Both your name and 
your labors will endure beyond those of temporal 



72 Pathfinders and Other 

heroes, who triumph only in the selfish successes 
of the hour. 

Translate your information into inspiration 
and aspiration. So equipped, go to it. DO and 
then you win. 



Saturday Sermonettes 73 

SIMPLICITY 

ADELINA PATTI'S test for a singer was 
iJL never, as you might suppose, *' Can you trill ? 
Can you imitate a mocking-bird?" No, it was 
"Can you sing a simple ballad in honest, straight- 
forward fashion? Such a ballad as 'Home, 
Sweet Home'?" That was a fair test. 

Simplicity shows quality naked and unadorned. 
And it is only genuine worth that dares challenge 
its criticism. 

It takes both courage and the consciousness of 
value to come before the world without affecta- 
tion. Our assumption of numberless little airs, 
poses and prejudices is but the confession and 
apology for weakness. 

The strong are always simple. Simplicity im- 
plies strength. The weak hide their defects and 
their lack with tricks and frills. 

The highest attainments in painting and sculp- 
ture are not the kaleidoscopic, brightly-colored 
canvases of battle scenes; not the complex many- 
turreted statue structures that misguided patriots 
sometimes erect in memorial of achievement. 
The greatest picture in the world is of a mother 
and her babe. As the sense of skill grows strong 
and the eye keen in its perception of beauty, non- 
essentials, jewelry and drapery, are stripped off 



74 Pathfinders and Other 

and the true artist finds satisfaction in the flow- 
ing line and satiny flesh texture of the simple 
human figure. 

In the world of letters, that which lives as 
poetry is not the half-hearted, labored utterances 
of a Poet Laureate on some quasi "great" occa- 
sion. Rather it is the simple stanza that sang 
itself out of some more obscure poet's heart that 
binds us all with living bonds through community 
of feeling and experience. The great song is never 
the oratorio but the ballad. 

Real worth is always unassuming and natural. 
High thinking seems automatically to draw unto 
itself the complement of plain living. Napoleon 
was always most at ease In the Spartan sim- 
plicity of camp on the battle field. To his mind, 
the grandeur and splendor of his French court were 
a concession to the limitations of the less great. 

Great minds focused as they are on great issues 
have small patience with the trivialities of cus- 
tom and convention. 

It Is only when the building is right, true in 
conception, strong in foundation, pure In out- 
line, that the architect dares let it stand forth 
unadorned. 

So with human souls. Our poor terms "home- 
liness" and "humanness" may stand for the 
truest aristocracy of human character. 



Saturday Sermonettes 75 

BOOKS 

OVER the door of the library at Thebes is 
inscribed ^'MEDICINE FOR THE SOUL." 

When friends are absent or when we meet disap- 
pointment, when discouragement or loneHness 
overtakes us, on the book shelves we will always 
find the master minds of the ages and to us they 
are always "at home." Their friendship is ever 
helpful, constant and true. 

He who has learned to love books has found the 
avenue to contentment. He who has learned to 
apply the accumulated wisdom of the centuries, 
which he gathers through books, to the busy 
world that surrounds him has found the secret of 
service. 

Books are tools. But as with the carpenter, 
the dull tool may spoil the best planned job. 
Books are good as they inspire good and as they 
are wisely used. Over-indulgence in purposeless 
reading will stifle endeavor. Prolific reading is 
not a virtue. Like any other over-indulgence it 
is a curse. 

"Books are fatal" was the exaggerated declara- 
tion of Disraeli. They are fatal only when they 
upset the normal balance and the rational rela- 
tions between the experiences of the past and the 
experiments of the present. 



76 Pathfinders and Other 



The past can not bind the future to its horizon. 
A book lives only so long as it is true. 

The good book is that which is fruitful of 
other books. The good idea is that which gives 
birth to a better idea. The wise reader finds a 
new use for old truths. 

Sir Walter Scott once confessed, "I have not 
read books since I started writing books." 

Books mirror the conditions of life. Society 
improves by contemplating itself in this mirror 
as does the individual before the mercury glass. 

If we would know life we must know people. 
Books bring us into close comradeship not only 
with the ripest minds of our own time, but with 
the master minds of all times. 

The book that has won the esteem of ages is 
worth knowing. It may tell of the youth of the 
nations which we now know. We may know the 
paths they are to travel better if we know the 
road over which they have come. 

It is the writers of great books who have voiced 
the universal brotherhood and predicted the 
international patriotism. Through books, as 
through nothing else, any soul may become the 
most intimate friend of the greatest souls. 

Through books we become heirs of the spiritual 
life of all the past. Through them the voices of 
those who have advanced the world become audi- 



Saturday Sermonettes 77 

ble to us. For us the orators declaim, the his- 
torians recite and the poets sing. They give meaning 
to the life that is and aspiration for the life to 
come. Books are, indeed, the imperishable friends 
of man and medicine for the soul. 



78 Pathfinders and Other 

ENEMIES OF SOCIETY 

IN his play, "An Enemy to Society," Ibsen 
tells the story of a young physician who, in the 
interests of public health, attacks the polluted 
water of a community and is thereby socially 
ostracized and bitterly condemned by the "honest" 
business men who feel that this exposure will 
injure the business growth of the place. 

Some years ago Lincoln Steffens declared that 
his own home town, Greenwich, Connecticut, was 
as corrupt as any city in America. The indignant 
trades people demanded that he be compelled to 
retract. He agreed to debate all comers on the 
issue in the auditorium of the town hall. The hall 
was jammed. With blackboard and chalk he 
charted his demonstration and so proved his con- 
tention that he silenced the ablest lawyers in the 
state who attempted to cross-examine him. Yet 
at the conclusion of that meeting the "good" 
citizens unanimously passed a resolution declar- 
ing that they loved their hills and elms, that they 
honored their women and that they were not 
corrupt. 

In every community, in every nation, and in 
every age, they who have fought for cleaner, 
healthier, more decent and more efficient condi- 
tions of life have always been denounced by those 



Saturday Sermonettes 79 

who are afraid that a better protection of human 
life or an attempt to make social conditions more 
wholesome would injure either their purses or a 
treasured traditional reputation. 

No town any more than an individual can hope 
to get ahead by standing still. You can't clean 
the house by hiding the dirt. He who would 
attempt to hide the faults of his town rather than 
correct them is, at best, a slovenly patriot and a 
false friend to the community. 

The most poverty stricken souls are those who 
feel that their only chance for self betterment 
comes through opposing progress. 

They may be ever so cultured, ever so widely 
traveled, and still lack the nobility of citizenship 
which will make succeeding generations honor 
and respect them. 

Education does not make a man good or excuse 
him for being indifferent to his duty to society. 
Knowledge is valueless unless it quicken the con- 
science into action, not only for the individual 
good but for the common good. 

He is the real soldier of society who fights for 
the correction of evils. He is an enemy of society 
who tries to hide these evils. To hide or protect 
an offense against the public is scarcely less a 
crime than to actually commit the offense. 



80 Pathfinders and Other 

DON'T SNEER, CHEER 

WHEN McCormick perfected his reaper his 
first pubHc demonstration of it failed because 
the rattle of the machine so frightened the horses 
that they ran away and demolished his invention. 
Those who could not invent a reaper sneered. 

When the locomotive first came into use there 
were those know-it-alls who said that it couldn't 
last and that it ought to be suppressed by law 
because it frightened horses and killed folks. 

The know-it-all is pretty sure to be the know- 
nothing. It is he the poet had in mind when he 
said: 

"The dull fool's sneer 

Hath ofttimes shot chill palsy through the arm, 

Just lifted to achieve its crowning deed." 

Every great achievement grows out of a noble 
dream and a consecrated enthusiasm. 

The prophetic vision plans and the fool ridicules. 

We ride on the horseless trolley car today; the 
telephone enables us to speak to an ear hundreds 
of miles away; we stitch a garment on a sewing 
machine in a day which by hand labor would 
mean the work of a fortnight; all because there 
have been men who would not yield their dreams 



Saturday Sermonettes 81 

to the cutting ridicule of the doubter and the 
drone. 

Every ship has its barnacles. Don't be a 
barnacle. Do more than merely hang on to any- 
thing that comes along. Get an idea, a pur- 
pose, a plan, a policy — anything that you think 
the world can use, then propel it. 

List yourself among those who believe that a 
thing CAN be done. Then convince yourself 
that YOU can do it. 

Don't be an ostrich with your head in the 
ground, declaring that because you do not see a 
thing it can't exist. 

The fellow that sees that which you can't see 
is not to be laughed at but to be respected and 
studied. It requires no brains to oppose progress. 
If you have brains use them. Build. If you 
haven't brains enough to build something your- 
self, turn in and help some other fellow. 

Any fool can break a watch; but it requires a 
man who has faith in himself to make a watch. 

Any brainless fool of an outlaw may wreck a 
train; but it takes an organized social force to 
build and operate that train. 

It takes but little to destroy; it takes no more 
to condemn. He who doubts, ridicules or sneers 
opposes progress. It is he who, because he cannot 
rise to the high, expansive powers of enthusiasm, 



82 Pathfinders and Other 

would drag the world down to his own miserable 
pessimistic level. 

The thing which drives the locomotive is the 
expansive power of steam. Like steam enthusiasm 
expands; it goes out. Enthusiasm creates all 
great things. 

The world is glad to fast forget the man who is 
always ready to cloud the rainbow of enthusiasm 
with forecasts of failure. 

Don't sneer at the fellows who TRY to do 
things. Cheer them. The world will love you 
for it. 



Saturday Sermonettes 83 

THEY WHO TRIUMPH 

VIEWED from the canyon depth a small hill 
may hide the loftiest mountain peak. You 
must put yourself at a distance to see which are 
the commanding mountains in the range. 

So with men. Neither the day nor yet the year 
gives the perspective with which to know who 
will be seen over the line of centuries. That 
which today appears to be defeat may tomorrow 
prove to be one of the crowning achievements of 
time. 

Success cannot be measured by the verdict of 
the hour. Were this so Hypatia and Galileo, 
Joan of Arc and Henry Hudson went down to 
defeat. Yet in the light of time it was they who 
triumphed. Those who then thought they tri- 
umphed were the ones defeated and fast for- 
gotten. 

Byron and Shelley thought their lives failures. 
Yet because they had something to give to the 
world better than that which the men about them 
had to give, they, though they knew it not, 
triumphed. 

The man is not weak who falls before the power 
of the mob or who holds to his convictions against 
the ridicule and condemnation of those who sur- 
round him. 



84 Pathfinders and Other 

Columbus sailed forth on unknown seas against 
the whole world's unbelief. What scholar that 
laughed at his mad faith gave two continents to 
the world? 

The big idea and the consecrated purpose will, 
alone and unarmed, batter down the most for- 
midable of thoughtless opposition. 

Fame is but the echo of action. He who puts a 
truth into action lives. 

The Welsh have an old slogan which reads: 
*'The truth against the world." The world may 
kill a man but it cannot kill the truth he brings 
to the world. 

New truths constantly arise to make old truths 
fallacies. 

That "scientist" is not a scientist who throws 
a cloud of doubt about new discoveries and inven- 
tions. 

Don't ridicule the fellow who thinks he has a 
new truth. If he believes enough to hold to it 
against your derision he, more likely than you, 
will be remembered long. 

Folks laughed at the man who declared that he 
could propel a boat by steam. The world no 
longer laughs at Fulton. The world has long used 
his idea and honors his name. 

Cities used to build walls about themselves 
because they scoffed at the idea that those walls 



Saturday Sermonettes 85 

might be battered down. They could not foresee 
the great modern gun much less the airship with 
its falling bombs. Folks who today laugh at the 
idea of universal peace are as thoughtlessly blind 
to the sure peace of the future as the Romans were 
to the destructive powers of a modern giant gun. 

Don't be too cocksure that the other fellow who 
is cocksure is wrong. It's the fellow who is so 
cocksure that he is willing to lie down with his 
faith, to die with his conviction, to never yield 
his idea, who has advanced this world, step by 
step, making each tomorrow better than yesterday. 



86 Pathfinders and Other 

SILENCE 

BISMARCK'S enemies said of him in their 
despair, "He knows how to keep silence in 
seven different languages." It was his baffling 
taciturnity that blunted the weapons they had 
forged against him. 

Silence is perhaps the greatest art of conversa- 
tion. 

Joseph Jefferson is credited with having dis- 
covered Weber and Fields, the comedians. After 
seeing them play in an obscure Bowery theater, he 
hurried to a theatrical manager friend, saying: 
"They know how to listen." 

A person often gains credit for sense, eloquence 
and wit, who merely says nothing and does it 
well. 

Silence indicates both courtesy and considera- 
tion. It gives the other fellow his turn. It pays 
him the compliment that his brain may also har- 
bor some worth-while idea. Every ideal relation 
savors of reciprocity. Every soul must have a 
medium and opportunity for self-expression. The 
one-sided conversation is always arrogant. Grant 
the other fellow a chance to say his say. 

Silence indicates control. We often read: "He 
mastered himself and was silent." The trivial 
gabble! When the mind is in control the machine 



Saturday Sermonettes 87 

is geared up tight. The wagging tongue always 
means loose tension. It is the loose gear that rat- 
tles. All nature pays homage to self-control. A 
wretch must sink low before he can be made to 
own that he has lost it. Life is one struggle to 
acquire it. It has no better indication than the 
ability to keep quiet. 

Silence is the great healing power of solitude. 
In the face of a great crisis we are silent. In a 
great emotion we are still. Silence can be eloquent. 
It is always majestic. 

"Silence is the lesson of kings," said Jean du 
Beauvais at the funeral of Louis XV. And Car- 
lyle has called silence the element of great things 
that fashion themselves together to rule. 

Silence is more unimpeachable than speech 
because it cannot be attacked. Great thoughts are 
born in silence. It is the mother of truth. It is 
the servant of reason. It is the best help to him 
who mistrusts himself. "Let us be silent," says 
Emerson, "that we may hear the whisper of the 
gods." 

Wars are waged by speech. Noise and tumult 
are the signs of war. Silence is the insignia of 
peace. It is quite as much a mark of strength to 
know how to hold your tongue as to know how to 
wisely use it. 



88 Pathfinders and Other 

THINK IT OUT 

IT is not by chance that anatomically the brain 
o'ertops your eyes, ears, nose and mouth but 
by design, that it may supervise what you are 
to see, hear, smell and taste. Think it out! 

Not by chance was your brain put above legs 
and arms but by plan, that it might direct and con- 
serve their energy. Think it out! 

Your brain — your best counsellor — sits in the 
"crow's nest" of your craft on purpose to oversee 
your course. It is equipped with the most precious 
power nature gave you. Make that brain yield 
you the fullest value. A clear brain is the best 
conserver of muscle and energy. Use it. Culti- 
vate the power to think clearly. 

As a people we evade hard thinking. Shallow 
surface cleverness is a too common characteristic. 
Our educational system develops the minds of our 
children along the lines of memory and absorption. 
Child and teacher seem equally afraid of reason. 
Thus as the child grows older he shows less and 
less inclination to tax his brain with thinking a 
thing out. Stuffed and crammed with information 
in early youth he faces life with few, if any, mate- 
rial powers developed. 

How enthusiastically and how blindly we em- 
bark on a new idea only to cast it aside when our 



Saturday Sermonettes 89 

muscles are tired and it doesn't "work." It may- 
have had its measure of value, else why our first 
enthusiasm. Think it out! 

Relax your muscle — cinch up your brain. A 
bit of adjustment that good thinking will suggest 
to you, — a bit of cool patience — oh, rarity among 
Americans, — and you may contribute something 
of value to the world. 

Success means ability to make the best use of 
our powers. Success means that the man in the 
"crow's nest" is awake and on guard. One of the 
best valued faculties commercially is the power 
to get efficient work out of men. Everywhere we 
hear the cry for efficiency. What scientific study 
we give to the elimination of waste! How we 
scheme to cut out unnecessary motion in even so 
primitive a work as brick-laying! Competition is 
so fierce that competitors bend every effort 
toward organization. The struggle for individual 
existence must mean better co-ordination in the 
human being himself. And education should 
mean organization for efficiency of a man's native 
powers. 

The vacant look, the wandering attention, the 
meaningless erratic motion characteristic of the 
imbecile or the lunatic, — all mean that the watch 
has left the "crow's nest." Reason is off duty. 

Think it out! 



90 Pathfinders and Other 

GREATNESS 

THOUGH the temple of fame is said to stand 
upon the grave and its flame to be kindled 
from the ashes of dead men there lies back of 
every such temple a life of romance, for fame is 
the echo of action. 

Fame is the fullest compensation for true and 
honorable deeds, and only in struggle and conflict 
can greatness be measured. Any one may be a 
pilot upon a peaceful sea. 

"A great man," said the Earl of Beaconsfield, 
"is one who affects the mind of his generation." 
Mere family never made a great man. Thought 
and deed, courage and conviction, and not pedi- 
gree, are the passports to enduring fame. 

Great men are not supernatural; they are the 
natural, the true men in whom nature has suc- 
ceeded. They who fall short of greatness are the 
imperfect. 

The great men are they who both see the right 
and choose it, — and having chosen pursue it with 
invincible resolution, resisting the temptations of 
easier paths. It is they who point out the way and 
by their example show others. 

Great men are unique only in that they are 
uncommon and are conspicuous by their contrast 
to the common. 



Saturday Sermonettes 91 

Minor minds may at times show greater origi- 
nality but it is range of vision, foresight and far- 
sight that lift up the common horde. 

Learn to think not in counties but in contin- 
ents and think with sincerity, for sincerity is the 
first attribute of greatness. 

In the panorama of time the great men loom up 
like snow-capped peaks above a range of hills. 
Each in its solitude represents a great spiritual 
force rather than material force. The great 
prophets and painters, preachers and poets, 
musicians and patriots all stood for, fought for, 
lived for and died for ideals. The princes of the 
market, the money changers, and the accumula- 
tors of material things, all have been forgotten, 
while the stories of the great spiritual forces that 
have molded and shaped the world have remained. 
They and they alone are the world's priceless 
heritage. 

Yet all these great potential powers have come 
to us unheralded and unknown, for there is noth- 
ing more simple than greatness. The greatest 
men like the greatest truths are the simplest. The 
great man is what he is from nature and he rises to 
his height of fame without reminding us of others. 
It is only the pretender who calls for contrasts. 
However far above us the truly great may be they 
always make us feel that they are our brothers. 



92 Pathfinders and Other 

No really great man ever thought himself as 
great as he really was. 

No man ever became great by Imitation. A 
great man must give us something new in thought 
or fact. Service becomes his passion. He be- 
comes the servant of mankind. Only the little 
king ever hopes to make mankind servant at his 
court. 

Great men never lose their childlike heart. 
They give to the world a great affection and it is 
this, when they are gone, which the world keeps 
and holds for them. Because great men possess 
this passion to serve rather than to be served, to 
give rather than to get, to do something for the 
world, we find great acts and great eloquence most 
commonly going hand in hand. 

The road to greatness is through loss of self 
in the thought of all. 



Saturday Sermonettes 93 

JUSTICE 

VIRTUE finds its truest expression in justice. 
Liberty and equality are empty words unless 
they rest upon justice which at all times is the 
true principle for humanity. Separate liberty or 
equality from justice and neither can stand. The 
passion of all great prophets throughout all ages 
has been for justice. 

It Is the one-word definition of the Golden 
Rule. It was not only the basis of the teachings 
of Jesus but of all great religious seers and proph- 
ets. Each In his turn and time and in his own 
way said the same thing. Confucius put It: 
"What I do not wish men to do to me, I also wish 
not to do to them." 

Justice Is virile; It Is never passive or indif- 
ferent. It Is truth In action. Justice may be 
violent; It Is always violent to the one who offends 
it. We may prize success, covet wealth, seek 
honor, but none of these can satisfy unless they 
come through justice. 

Justice is the goal of civilization. 

He Is great who for justice's sake can forget 
friends, kin, self-interest, — all — to fight for or to 
work for that which Is right for another, a stranger 
perhaps, or even an enemy. We cannot secure 
justice for ourselves through denying justice to 



94 Pathfinders and Other 

others. It Is not in the order of things, for jus- 
tice is consistent, impartial and always fair. 

Justice does not delay. Justice is prompt. 
The court that countenances delay defeats jus- 
tice. 

Justice is not pity; it is greater than pity. 
Pity consoles; justice strengthens. It tends to fos- 
ter in men the strong qualities which make for 
good citizenship. 

Though justice is impartial it is not blind. 
Science is governed by its laws. 

Justice is wisdom. Education is its agent; 
ignorance its enemy. The cultivated mind seeks 
fairness. Culture rejoices in equity. The unre- 
fined mind seeks advantage. It is the man who 
tries to live by his cunning who finds himself in 
court. 

The nation that loves liberty most sincerely 
and that fights only for human justice is seldom 
found in the brutal entanglements of war and then 
only in a benignant war made holy by the passion 
for justice. The nation that covets property and 
men, that seeks to enrich itself by devastating 
its neighbor, is found most often in the throes 
of war and then for the shameful and unsatisfy- 
ing end of boldly defying justice. And as with 
nations so with men. Such nations come to no 
good end. 



Saturday Sermonettes 95 

"Justice," said Daniel Webster, "is the great- 
est interest of man on earth. It is the ligament 
which holds civilized beings and civilized nations 
together." 

Happiness and progress are secured only when 
justice is honored. 



96 Pathfinders and Other 

^ LIBERTY 

MAN prizes nothing so much as his freedom. 
Deprive him of it and he will give his last 
dollar to get it back. 

The cry of every soul from its first conscious 
moment is for liberty. 

The captured animal paces before the bars 
of his cage in search of liberty. Freedom is de- 
pendent upon knowledge. The lion loses his 
liberty because he lacked the wit to trap the 
man. 

Ignorant men, like fierce lions, are apt to look 
upon liberty as license. But he only is free who 
is protected from injury. 

Liberty never defies law; it establishes and 
respects law. The fellow who loses his liberty 
quickest is he who attempts to take more than he 
is entitled to. The highest liberty is in harmony 
with the highest laws. 

Real liberty is not reached suddenly; it un- 
folds slowly. It is never won cheaply; it is diffi- 
cult to attain. 

The best liberty we know is worth only what 
the best civilization is worth. 

Liberty is not idleness; it is merely the free 
use of time. It is the opportunity to choose our 
labor and to use without restraint our minds. 



Saturday Sermo7iettes 97 

Through the just acquisition of money and 
property, we may buy a physical liberty; we may 
be free to go where and how we please but we may 
still be slaves to prejudice, superstition, false idols, 
and false ideals. 

The ripest liberty comes only through the 
cultivation and emancipation of the mind. The 
schoolhouse and the college are the pathfinders 
of freedom. 

In his Reflections on the French Revolution, 
Burke declares that liberty without wisdom is the 
greatest of all possible evils for it is folly, vice 
and madness without tuition or restraint. 

He who plans to leave wealth to his children 
does less well by them than he who bequeaths 
them liberty. And liberty can be insured only 
through the mind that is made strong enough to 
be independent of others. 

Liberty is a positive force; it is the moral 
power of self-government. 

No man can himself be free who does not wish 
that all men be free and who is not willing to fight for 
the freedom of all. Liberty respects and safeguards 
the rights of all. Liberty is love. It is the watch- 
word of all commonwealths; it is the battle cry of 
brotherhood. It is the one-word creed of Christian- 
ity. It is the foundation on which America rests, — 
the assurance of her greatness and her glory. 



98 Pathfinders and Other 

TALK 

WISE men measure their words. The tongue 
that runs ahead of its wit says little worth 
recording. The so-called "silver-tongued orator" 
seldom says anything which is remembered. 
Brevity in speech is a virtue. The greatest story 
in history is the story of the Crucifixion, which was 
told in six hundred words. The model speech in 
English oratorical literature is Lincoln's Gettys- 
burg address. Edward Everett Hale's formula 
for writing applies equally well to conversa- 
tion: "Have something to say; say it; stop." 

Be sparing of the first person pronoun. How- 
ever much you may be interested in yourself 
remember that the world is vastly interested in 
others. One of the wisest prophets of our Concord 
colony three score years ago said, "Egotists can- 
not converse, they talk to themselves only." 

"Talk often but never long" was the advice of 
Lord Chesterfield to his son, explaining that by 
so doing if he did not please he at least would 
not tire his hearers. 

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table tells 
us that talking is like playing a harp; it is as 
much a part of the art to lay the hand on the 
strings to stop their vibrations as to twang them 
to bring out their music. 



Saturday Sermonettes 99 

Talking Is a fine art. It is as difiicult to 
master as music and like music its fluent har- 
monies may be spoiled by the infusion of a single 
harsh note. 

The artist tells the story to the eye. The true 
talker tells the story to the ear. Much paint 
applied to canvas does not make a picture. 
Neither will mere words convey an idea nor estab- 
lish a conviction. 

He who talks about things he knows is he who 
reaches the hearing ear. The person who talks 
with equal vivacity on every subject usually 
excites but little interest in any. 

The man who sets out to talk for fame never 
can be pleasing; the man who talks to unburden 
his mind and who has in his mind something 
worth unloading is the man who delights you. 

People soon learn to recoil from those who have 
neither wit to speak well nor judgment to hold 
their tongue. 

We seldom regret saying too little; we often 
repent having said too much. 

Long talking begets short hearing. "Blessed 
is the man," says George Eliot, "who, having 
nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy 
evidence of the fact." 

The gossip is never loved. It is the evil 
tongue that never wants a whet. 



100 Pathfinders and Other 

The spendthrift of the tongue reaps no more 
honor than the spendthrift of the purse. 

The old red schoolhouse axiom "Think twice 
before you speak" is a good Hfe rule. Reflection 
should always precede expression. 

The late Senator Elkins of West Virginia had 
in his unique vocabulary the expression ''cab 
wit," which he defined as the wit that thought out 
on the way home what it should have said. 

Intemperance in talk is not only an abomina- 
tion but often a man's pitfall. 

Plutarch declared that "talkative people, if they 
wish to be loved, are hated; if they desire pleasure, 
they bore; when they think they are admired, 
they are really laughed at; they spend and get 
no gain from so doing; they injure their friends, 
benefit their enemies, and ruin themselves." 

The best men are always the men of few words 
who convey the most pregnant thoughts in sim- 
plest sentences. A good talker even more than a 
good orator implies a good audience. 

The small mind indulges in small talk; the miind 
that is crowded with ideas has no room for gossip. 
The heart that is filled with love, human sympa- 
thy and justice, cannot compel its tongue to 
speak words of hate, jealousy and wrong. 

The tongue is the tattler; it tells your character 
as surely as the sun tells the course of day. 



Saturday Sermonettes 101 

ROAD-MAKING 

EVERY man is a road-maker. He builds the 
road over which he himself is to travel. If he 
is careless and insincere his road will be poorly 
made and he will find himself stalled in the soft 
mud of indifference. If he be sincere and diligent he 
will make a highway over which he can travel far. 

The ancient Romans built, with much labor, 
the famous Appian Way. To do this they laid end 
to end great, heavy, flat stones. 

Many centuries later a Scotchman by the 
name of McAdam found a better way to build an 
enduring road. Time shifted the great blocks of 
the Appian Way; they were not laid upon a strong 
bed of little stones. McAdam accepted for his 
road only very little stones — stones that would 
slip between his thumb and first finger. The little 
stones could shift, they could settle and as they 
shifted and settled the "macadam" road became 
firmer and better. 

The life road-maker who makes surest of his 
future lays his road bed in daily deeds of good 
rather than by seeking only to lay down the large 
blocks of ambitious performance. 

The man who gets most out of life and he who 
gives most to life is the man who sees the good in 
little things, — who learns how to use little things, — 



102 Pathfinders and Other 

who neglects or despises no detail and who builds 
his life road constantly and insistently with little 
deeds well done. 

Measure the deeds of any great man and you 
will find his achievements have grown out of 
an experience of doing the small things with 
patience and painstaking fidelity. 

The man of moral courage does not reach his 
moral power by one full leap; it is a matter of 
road-making; he acquires his moral strength step 
by step. 

The architect who conceives the great cathe- 
dral or the monumental tower has first learned to 
use the T-square and the sweep; he has learned 
the mathematical laws that govern the stress and 
distribution of weight; he has built his road step 
by step and over it he has reached the thing of 
strength and beauty. 

The road that is without a firm foundation is 
not the road of an enduring civilization. Soft 
clay carries no commerce. The road of least 
resistance is the road that retards progress, — that 
holds back the traveler who would use it. Each 
day we lay the foundation for the road we are to 
travel tomorrow. 

Life's prizes are not gifts; they are goals; they 
must be won; we must build the road over which 
we are to pass to reach them. 



Saturday Sermonettes 103 

HEART CULTURE 

MUSIC is the universal language. The truth 
of this lies in the fact that music is the 
language of the heart rather than of the intellect. 
The most valuable culture to civilization is heart 
culture. It governs, modifies, multiplies and in- 
terprets all else. 

The most skilled and trained intellect loses its 
greatest potential possibilities if it be not governed 
by a sensitive and cultivated heart. 

Believe in the heart; listen to its pleadings and 
appeals; be not afraid to give the sympathy which 
it dictates or to modify your judgments by its 
sentiments. 

However admirable is a brilliant and logical 
mind, however enviable is the skilled or art- 
touched hand, something still more good and 
beautiful lies within the heart that has been 
trained to be true and generous. 

There is no wealth in the world that is com- 
parable with the wealth of affection and esteem. 
To be loved by many is the world's greatest 
reward for doing good. 

He is loved most who loves most. 

The thing to be desired is more heart, — 
more heart in our work, more heart in our play, 
more heart in all our intercourses with the world 



104 Pathfinders and Other 

around us. There never can be too much heart 
— the grievances and distress of this world are 
the products of our lack of it. The whole world 
was wrecked by a nation that dedicated its power 
to a hymn of hate. 

Emerson u,^ed to say that the best thing a boy 
got out of college was a room and a fire-place to 
himself. Literally, that probably applied to the 
Harvard of his day; figuratively, even with our 
congested and steam-fitted dormitories, it applies 
today. "The still small voice within" is a good 
teacher. 

Man is made useful through what he can give 
rather than through what he can get. Men are 
measured by what they can do and by the means 
they have of expressing themselves. He who is 
unable to express himself in the terms of the heart 
falls short of the world's most coveted goal. 

The man who is loved by children, whatever 
his sins of commercial greed may be, is a thousand 
times more favored in the eyes of the Lord, Who 
said, "Come unto Me," than is his caustic critic 
of pretended virtues whose shallow character is 
revealed by the lack of love from little ones. 

The tendency of this age, with its commer- 
cialized "get" instinct, is to harden rather than 
to mellow our hearts. We live in a commercial 
world and he loses life itself who so far yields 



Saturday Sermonettes 105 

to the purely money-making tendency of the 
times as to wholly forget the wealth that tender- 
ness tenders. 

Cultivate the muse of music, the thoughts of 
universal things. Cherish the all-inclusive instincts. 

The need of these days is not greater oppor- 
tunities for commerce and trade so much as a 
larger realization of the possibilities latent in the 
fellowship of mankind. 

Men have lived with keener and more culti- 
vated minds than Lincoln, but Lincoln lives in 
the minds of men as the master man because his 
mind was guided by a cultivated heart. 



106 Pathfinders and Other 

GO AHEAD 

THE bud unfolds into the flower. The seed, 
laid in the clod, finds its way to the light. 
The short green wheat blade of spring becomes the 
tall golden stem of summer, crowned by many 
grains. Truth is never idle. Truth is growth; it 
is progress. 

You cannot serve truth and repose. You must 
contribute something to the world or you are as 
the dead seed laid away. That which is yours to 
do cannot be done for you. Each man is his own 
maker. The only nobility that the world perma- 
nently recognizes is that which grows out of use- 
fulness. 

The purple pride of the Caesars lurks in the 
veins of fruit venders today. Do not trust either 
your happiness or your place in history to the 
deeds of your fathers. That sturdy band of Pil- 
grims who would not relinquish their convictions 
would find but little content in your pride in the 
Mayflower if they realized that you, who boast of 
their heritage, made no denials and were unwilling 
to endure hardships for the cause of truth and 
right. 

As sons and daughters of the American Revolu- 
tion we too often boast of our forefathers' frank 
and fearless love of liberty while we cunningly 



Saturday Sermonettes 107 

evade the emancipations we might proclaim were 
we not ourselves slaves of greed. 

We who boast of fathers who fought to make 
men free should recount what we ourselves have 
given or are willing to give in time, labor or money 
for the freedom of those who are hopelessly 
chained down. Do we seek truth, do we love free- 
dom so long as we allow men, under our laws, to 
coin money out of the labor of little children or 
to abuse women for profit? Greed is a poor gun 
with which to hunt happiness. 

Be no parasite. Profess no patriotism that you 
have not earned. When chided that he had no 
ancestors Napoleon replied, "I am an ancestor." 

It is the first edition of a great book and not the 
last that brings the big price. Be the pattern not 
the emulation. 

"Through the corridors of time," said Victor 
Hugo, ''there ever echoes the sound of the patent 
boot descending and the wooden shoe ascending. " 
Neither disdain the plowmen from whom you 
come nor rest upon the triumphs your ancestors 
won. Be yourself, in and by your own right a 
MAN. 

The thriving family tree never grows upon dead 
roots. The more you talk about the family from 
which you came the more will people talk about 
you; the more will they suspect you need the prop. 



108 Pathfinders and Other 

Don't look back; look ahead. 

Don't let them find you coming down the 
steps — let them find you going up. Be not con- 
tent with either reflection or repose. Seek the 
truth — and the truth is only found by GOING 
AHEAD. 



Saturday Sermonettes 109 

THE FORCES OF SELFISHNESS 

NOT long before England's greatest editor, 
William T. Stead, set sail on the ill-fated 
Titanic he was asked this question: "What will 
be the great war of the twentieth century?" To 
which he promptly replied: "The war against 
poverty." 

Kings will not direct this war; nor will organ- 
ized military forces champion its cause. It will 
come through the individual's protest against the 
oppression of organized power; it will come 
through the righteous resentment of sensible 
selfishness. 

When the individual shall assert himself, misery 
and degradation will cease to be. Poverty is a 
power with which crowns cannot cope. 

The French Revolution was a battle between 
the forces of selfishness and selfishness, and the 
righteously selfish won. 

When men once feel their own power they 
become masters of their own circumstances. To 
be free is the commonest of self instincts. The 
doctrine of the survival of the fittest is the doc- 
trine of the survival of the selfish. 

Our captains of industry, actuated by the power 
of selfishness, become the masters of commerce 
and therefore the masters of men. The love of 



110 Pathfinders and Other 

liberty defies the rule of the master, for liberty 
is the sentiment of selfishness. Thus the selfish 
masters of industry find themselves opposed by an 
individual selfishness, out of which clash must 
grow a fairer distribution of the spoils of the 
world, thus lessening poverty and distress. 

Selfishness insists upon rights. But that sel- 
fishness which, in the quest of rights, forgets 
DUTY soon faces defeat. 

In the new order of things rights must regulate 
industry and trade, but DUTY must perform 
its work and he who, demanding rights, declines 
to do his DUTY, defeats his own ends. 

Government is but a system of organized sel- 
fishness. When it falls into the hands of a few, it 
becomes oppressive. When it falls into the hands 
of many, it becomes beneficent. Hence the tri- 
umph of democracy. 

Patriotism is selfishness glorified. Our fore- 
fathers, upon many fields of battle, employed 
both the bullet and the bayonet to insure their 
rights. 

But selfishness is already squelching war. Men 
do not wish to receive injury; therefore, they can 
not give injury. The ballot takes the place of the 
bayonet and men are learning that they cannot 
vote an injury to another without risking an 
injury in return. 



Saturday Sermonettes 111 

The laws of self protection are the laws of altru- 
ism. The rights of men can be granted only- 
through obedience to the Golden Rule. Thus 
does the selfish insistence of all usher in the dawn 
of a better day. 



112 Pathfinders and Other 

GUIDE RIGHT 

VICTOR HUGO once made one of his char- 
acters In fiction ask of another, ''What is the 
greatest thing in the world?" to which the other 
replied, "Man's capacity and desire to work with 
man." 

The lonesome man in the world's procession is 
he who is out of step, who has never learned how 
to take his place in the great parade, who has not 
learned the marching game. 

The saddest discouragements are always those 
that grow out of involuntary loneliness. A college 
student who had shown great proficiency in Greek 
explained his position behind a Boston hotel cigar 
counter by saying, "This is the way the world uses 
its scholars." The poor fellow's analysis was all 
wrong. With better truth he might have said, " This 
is the only way this scholar is able to use the world. " 

The mind that can absorb without contributing 
is as much out of step as the mechanic who swings 
his hammer to break rather than to build. 

Man's attainments are measured by his contri- 
bution to the welfare of the world. 

No painter reaches triumph in his art until he 
creates a picture that others, too, appreciate. 

No writer is an author until he creates a book 
that others find profit in reading. 



Saturday Sermonettes 113 

No thinker is a philosopher until he establishes 
a philosophy that others can use. 

All work must be purposeful. It must be direct- 
ed toward the needs of society or it is energy 
wasted as powder exploded in air. 

A clockmaker may with infinite skill fit and 
adjust his miniature mill wheels and highly refined 
steel springs, but unless they be so assembled as 
to tell with accuracy the story of the established 
laws of time, his work is wasted. 

A mob is a mass of men unorganized without a 
defined purpose, with no right guide and without 
knowing how to guide right. 

A regiment is a mass of men organized with 
leadership, every man trained to guide right and 
to hold his purposeful place in a purposeful plan. 

A battalion of infantry is strong, not because it 
is a CROWD of men but because it is a BODY of 
men. Each soldier has learned the power of pur- 
poseful effort, has learned to "guide right," to 
march shoulder to shoulder, each contributing 
something to the well-organized and well-defined 
whole. 

So always with the man who succeeds, whether 
he be mechanic or artisan, soldier or scholar. He 
must learn to march with men, be he private in 
the ranks, or the captain who orders the day. 



114 Pathfinders and Other 

THE SELF MADE MAN 

EARLY in his titled life of affluence Count 
Tolstoi declared that to comprehend the 
dignity and honor of labor one must frequently 
do a real, hard, whole day's manual work. And 
this work must be of a kind that will help others 
more than oneself. Tolstoi may not have found 
the only way to acquire the comprehensive sym- 
pathy of service and human helpfulness, but his 
life clearly and wonderfully demonstrated that 
through this practice he found an open avenue to 
the hearts of men who toil. 

Tolstoi set out to understand society. This he 
could not do through knowing the prince and 
being ignorant of the peasant, any more than 
could the peasant have an understanding of the 
intricacies of the social fabric by knowing his 
own conditions without knowing the life of the 
prince. 

Efiiciency in industry as in all things grows out 
of knowledge. Knowledge is understanding. Un- 
derstanding is experience. 

"From log cabin to success" is the biograph- 
ical formula of most great Americans, not be- 
cause the boy born of affluence has less wit or 
brain than the boy of log-cabin birth, but be- 
cause the boy that is not confronted with 



Saturday Sermonettes 115 

necessity too seldom has the perspective that 
Tolstoi had when, to know his own side of life, 
he realized that he must also know the other side 
of life. The log-cabin boy, born in the adver- 
sities, aspires; necessity drives him, and the 
driving advances him through the school of ex- 
perience. 

The president of a great electrical machine 
company tells the story of how, when his man- 
ufacturing company was in its infancy, he sought 
a college trained electrician to develop as a 
sales manager. Through a "pull" he was preju- 
diced in favor of the highly educated son of 
a friend. This boy, a graduate of one of our 
greatest technical schools, was already earning 
a good salary as a telephone manager. He was 
told that the new position would pay him but 
a dollar a day; that he must put on his 
jeans and labor as a workman in the shops for 
a year. The opportunity was disdainfully de- 
clined. 

Another technically educated young man from 
an even wealthier home, possessing a Tolstoian 
vision, hastened to apply for the job. It was 
given to him; he went into the shop and began 
in the unskilled labor class. Today he is the 
chairman of the board of directors of that great 
company and with all his wealth a leader of labor, 



116 Pathfinders and Other 

loved and honored by laboring men because he too 
KNOWS toil. 

The self-made man may come out of wealth or 
poverty. It is the sympathetic understanding of 
the other fellow, the willingness to work with and 
for men, that makes MEN. 



Saturday Sermonettes 117 

DUTY 

THIS is a positive world. Upon every living 
creature is imposed an obligation. Duty 
demands that this obligation be met. He who fails 
to meet it is a drone. The world discards its drones. 
Do not let yourself be cast into the discard. 

Duty is a stem taskmaster. It commands us 
to be useful, not according to our desires, but 
according to our powers. 

Duty will tolerate neither slight nor neglect. 
If you fail to meet your interest you pay com- 
pound interest. So with duty, the more you shirk 
it the higher it piles up before you. 

If you break the thread in the loom by being 
false to your duty today you may confront the 
flaw tomorrow when you will have forgotten its 
cause and are helpless to mend it. 

Duty is the condition of existence; it is the 
passport to liberty. It is the foundation to human 
rights. Duty and liberty must stand or fall 
together. 

Duties seldom come through choice. They 
are the lot of destiny. The reward for doing one 
duty is the power to fulfill another. 

The arm that swings the hammer grows strong. 
The conscience that, soldier-like, pursues duty 
daily develops character. 



118 Pathfinders and Other 

Duty is the acid test of manhood. It marks 
heroes and shows the shams of pretenders. 

Duty is not spasmodic, — it does not confront 
us occasionally; it is constant. Some duty meets 
each of us face to face every day. We cannot 
meet it by long jumps. We must follow it step 
by step. It will permit no one to pile weight upon 
weakness. 

Duty measures time cautiously. With every 
duty we are given the time in which to do it. But 
we are not given time to spare. Neglect will for- 
feit fylfillment. Do your duty now. Take no 
chance. Duty delayed spells failure. 

Pleasure often appears to be in conflict with 
duty because in attempting to discharge our duty 
we do only what we are strictly obliged to do, and 
we feel we are seldom praised for it. Yet the 
pleasure a man of honor enjoys in the conscious- 
ness of having performed his duty is a reward he 
pays himself for all his pains. 

The first, the last, and the greatest pleasure 
in life is the sense of having discharged our duty. 

The sense of duty pursues us ever. It justi- 
fies life. The doing it is its own full, rich reward. 



Saturday Sermonettes 119 

GENIUS 

THOUGH it IS a common practice to covet 
genius or gold, just waiting will bring neither. 
It is foolish to assume that you possess a measure 
of genius and that all you have to do is to wait for 
inspiration. 

Inspiration goes hunting for no one. If you 
want it you yourself must go and get it. 

Genius is always impatient. It is restless, 
eager. Latent genius is but a presumption. Inac- 
tion produces nothing. Though patience may be 
employed, genius is always a matter of energy, 
expression in action, just as an oak that flourishes 
for a thousand years springs not into full life like 
a reed, so does many a genius develop slowly, 
laboriously but surely. 

The men of greatest genius have invariably been 
amongst the most plodding, hard working, and 
intent men. Their chief contrast with other men 
has been their capacity to labor harder and more 
eifectively. 

To do, through labor, that which seems to be 
impossible to labor is the mark of genius. 

Genius is not haughty. It does not look with 
disdain upon the ** vulgar masses." On the con- 
trary it is lonely without the surrounding presence 
of a people to inspire it. 



120 Pathfinders and Other 

Genius is life intensified. It makes a nature 
many sided, whole, while most men remain 
partial or fragmentary. 

There are no astonishing ways of doing as- 
tonishing things. All things are done with the 
everyday tools we have about us. Through per- 
severance and devotion to a purpose comes 
that refinement of our faculties which we call 
genius. 

Men of genius are not possessed of unnatural 
gifts. Their own cultivated fineness renders them 
more alive than the ordinary men to the super- 
natural. Yet the greatest geniuses have at- 
tributed their crowning achievements to God as 
if conscious of being possessed of a spark of His 
divinity. 

This but emphasizes the false egotism of those 
who pose as possessors of genius and have it not. 

Eccentricity is not a sign of genius. Genius is 
natural, always plain. Only the pretender affects 
the pose. He must; it is all he has. Genius does 
not. It reveals itself by doing things better. 

Genius is as rich as it is generous, as noble as 
its ideal. If it hoards it impoverishes itself. If 
it seeks to better the world it lifts itself into a 
glory that money cannot buy. 

The monuments to genius endure as the service 
of genius is generous. 



Saturday Sermonettes 121 

As a great city is to a state so does genius stand 
out above the plane of men as a tower of concen- 
trated power. For genius is labor plus patience, 
plus perseverance, plus power and plus AN 
IDEAL. 



122 Pathfinders and Other 

VISION 

GREAT men think in continents, not in 
counties. It is the men with vision who 
have made the big marches in the world's progress. 

King Ferdinand of Spain could find many men 
with brains enough to be prime minister; but 
there was only one man in his kingdom who could 
find a world. 

The great dreams are the day dreams. All 
great achievements are self-promised to him who 
achieves them. 

Emerson's "hitch your wagon to a star" 
was as sage advice as Greeley's "Go west, young 
man." Both urged a larger horizon, a bigger 
vision. Don't be afraid to dare. Attack the un- 
attainable. Attempt to make possible the impossi- 
bilities and you will come nearer to your star 
than you ever dreamed you could. 

Learn to look at the world through a telescope, 
not through a microscope. It is more important 
that you should see the unit than that you should 
know the cell. It is better to own the integer than 
the fraction. 

The only value of knowing the little things in 
life is that we may better see and dream the big 
things. We learn the alphabet not because we 
want to know "a" from "b," but because we want 



Saturday Sermonettes 123 

to provide ourselves with the ideas which grouped 
letters may convey to us. 

Imagination is the eye of the soul. Men are 
great in proportion to the measure of their imagina- 
tion and in proportion to the knowledge which 
they possess to support and govern it. 

Without education the imagination is either 
crippled or uncontrolled. The picture in the tele- 
scope means most to the mind that has mastered 
the picture in the microscope. That mind sees the 
bond between the infinitesimal and the infinite. 

Many a biologist can hitch polysyllabic terms 
to infinitesimal things who cannot grasp the 
simple truths of great things. 

The geologist and the astronomer, though know- 
ing the molecule, must think in big terms; they 
toy with glaciers, oceans, mountains, worlds. 

You cannot know the desert by merely micro- 
scopically observing the crystal grain of sand. 
Neither a drop of water nor yet a single wave can 
tell the story of the ocean's wonder. Only the 
endless line of a calm sea's horizon can convey 
the sense of the sea's vastness. 

The imagination of the trained mind is the 
secret of civilization. It is the most active, the 
least susceptible to fatigue of all the faculties 
of man. But he who has imagination without 
learning has wings on which to fly but no feet 



124 Pathfinders and Other 

on which to stand. His dreams become to him as 
the fairy tales to the poor. 

To dream great dreams and make those dreams 
REAL is the creative faculty that lifts great men 
above their fellows as snow capped peaks raise 
their rugged shoulders above the rolling ranges 
about them. 



Saturday Sermonettes 125 

PERSEVERANCE 

WEALTH inherited is never valued like wealth 
earned. Victory is great as the battle is hard. 
There is no short road to real triumph. That which is 
gained easily is lost easily. " Easy comes, easy goes. " 

The plant that grows fast withers rapidly. The 
tree that grows slowly endures. 

Steadfast application will do more than the 
quick, hard blow of impatience. Dropping water 
will cut its way through granite. 

Mountains were not made in moments; they 
are the work of ages. 

Great deeds are done not by strength but by 
persistence. 

Want a thing hard enough, work for it long 
enough and you are pretty sure to get it. 

A single purpose is the first essential to success. 
Stick to it. Tenacity is the primary element of 
greatness. 

It is wisdom to build castles in the air; but it is 
folly to stop there. Go at your foundation; pile 
stone upon stone until you reach your castle. 
Then it is yours. 

"Stay with it" is the slogan that makes the 
cowboy master of the bucking broncho. 

"Don't give up the ship," was the command 
to his men that brought Perry victory. 



126 Pathfinders and Other 

Perpetual pushing puts difficulties out of coun- 
tenance and makes seeming impossibilities give 
way. 

The weak wait for the opportunity to strike 
while the iron is hot. The strong make opportunity 
by striking the iron until it is hot. 

Perseverance rather than brilliancy is the best 
in a long race. 

The tortoise knows he has to do his utmost 
all the time to even hope to cope with the hare. 
The hare knowing his better speed often relies 
upon sprints and delays too long. 

Over-confidence foreshadows neglect. Don't 
go to sleep at the switch. It isn't worth the risk. 

The pick and spade persistently applied at a 
fixed place may penetrate a mountain. 

The oceans have been wedded through the 
Suez and Panama canals by just plain digging. 

He who attains eminence spends his energies 
in one pursuit. 

There is no creature so humble but who armed 
with determination may not gain his point. 

By gnawing through a dyke even a rat may 
drown a nation. 

No soldier was ever decorated with shoulder 
straps for marking time. 

Brand the word "forward" on your brain. 
Always obey it. Go ahead and keep going. 



Saturday Sermonettes 127 

Don't worry about what the other fellow can do. 
He may be better than you, but you stick to your 
job. You may be the tortoise that wins the race. 
For, — "He that shall endure unto the end the 
same shall be saved." 



128 Pathfinders and Other 

KNOWLEDGE 

EDUCATION, like gold, is valued by every- 
body. There is no one without it who does 
not wish he possessed it. There is no one who 
possesses it that does not wish he had more of it. 

Those who are best educated are ignorant of 
many subjects. No one can know everything. You 
may speak ten languages and be unable to tell 
what the weather will be tomorrow. 

You may know the laws of navigation but unless 
you can use these laws to pilot your ship clear of the 
icebergs, that knowledge will be of little worth. 

Abstract knowledge is of little value. Pure 
culture is not an achievement of which to boast. 
It is the applied knowledge that is worth while. 
Learn that you may achieve. Acquire wisdom 
that you may serve. 

Knowledge put to use is power. 

It is applied knowledge that lifts one man above 
another. 

Genius is the capacity to use knowledge, to 
weave it into a fabric or mould it into a structure, 
to give it order and beauty. 

There is no culture that is antagonistic to the 
knowledge to which you hitch your reputation. 
The wise man will know as much as he can about 
as many things as he can. 



Saturday Sermonettes 129 

The more knowledge a man has the better 
will he do his work and the more surely will he 
understand his limitations and guard against them. 

No knowledge is harmful; all knowledge is 
helpful. And to be able to know that you do not 
know is in itself knowledge. 

The "know-it-all" is distrusted by all. The 
world respects the intelligence of the man who 
frankly admits his ignorance. 

The most helpful knowledge is that of know- 
ing where we can go to learn, and from whom we 
can learn. 

Knowledge always demands a companion vir- 
tue before it becomes effective. You must have 
purpose if you would apply it. You must put it 
to an honest use if you would have it serve you. 

Knowledge without integrity is dangerous. 

Integrity without knowledge is weak. 

An ancient adage tells us that whosoever ac- 
quires knowledge and does not practise it, re- 
sembles him who ploughed but did not sow. 

To possess knowledge and lack purpose is to 
furnish your house and not occupy it. 

The purpose of education is to improve the tools 
with which you carve out your life work and destiny. 

Knowledge is the only wealth you cannot lose; it 
is the only jewel that will not dim. Like the sun 
it lights our pathway and lures us to noble deeds. 



130 Pathfinders and Other 

ENVY 

INFERIORITY is the root of all envy. The 
strong covet the respect of others, not their 
envy. For envy is the rebellion of the incompe- 
tent. It is the door plate of ignorance. 

Once envy is permitted to take root it crowds 
out ambition as a weed kills a cultured plant. 

Envy benumbs and stupifies determination. 
It is a confession of despair. It produces nothing. 
It yields no return. To submit to it is to bankrupt 
endeavor. 

Hatred has the virtue of force. You can bat- 
tle with resistance. But envy lays down all arms. 
Irreconcilable, it cannot even be offended into 
action. 

They who are unwilling to hear good tidings 
of a neighbor and can find happiness only in 
seeing others depressed to a level with them- 
selves are the most hopelessly lost to the work 
of the world. Their envy is a passion so full 
of cowardice that even they have not the confi- 
dence to openly own it. The weakest are reluc- 
tant to pose as foes of character. Envy is a secret 
vice. 

Because it is passive, because it dare not strike, 
the hate which the strong bear with greatest pa- 
tience is the hate of envy. 



Saturday Sermonettes 131 

No voice is more ill-natured than envy. Its 
component parts are meanness and malice. It 
wishes the force of goodness to be lost and the 
measure of happiness to be abated. It laments 
prosperity, it sickens at the sight of health. 

Upon all occasions that ought to give him 
pleasure the envious man wilfully puts himself in 
pain. He converts what should be life's relish 
into secret anguish. Those things which give the 
highest satisfaction to others give him the quickest 
pangs. To him all the perfections of fellow crea- 
tures are odious. Youth, beauty, valor, integrity 
and wisdom are provocations for his displeasures. 

To be offended with excellence, to hate a man 
because the world approves is but the faint praise 
of a wretched soul. 

So false to all good is envy that no man can 
despise it more than he who envies most. As a 
slave to a drug he would rise above it if he could, 
and envies no one so much as he who can. 

Envy hurts only the possessor. Like a scor- 
pion confined within a circle of fire it stings itself 
to death. 

As a moth gnaws a garment, so with slow sure- 
ness does envy consume a man. 

The truest evidence of character is to be with- 
out a touch of envy. 



132 Pathfinders and Other 

BE BUSY 

YOU cannot test your muscle sitting still. You 
cannot find out what your brain can do by 
going to sleep. Repose is not a prodder to progress. 
Its proper place is after work, not before work. Work 
is for the living; rest for the dead. Be a live one. 

It has often been said "Thou shalt work" 
should be one of the commandments of every 
religion. 

Work is the noble yardstick by which we de- 
termine the worth of all things. It is the climax 
of God's gifts to man. It is a blessing not a curse. 
Deprive a man of the right to work and you have 
imposed the superlative punishment because man 
knows no joy or repose that is not found along 
the pathway of work. 

The man who never does anything never knows 
anything. The man who never works never 
gets anything. He may be given things but he 
can only again give. He knows no building game. 

The traveled rail and the driving piston rod 
are polished by use. The idle piece of steel is red 
with rust. Better to wear out than to rust out. 

History is the story of work, the record of 
achievements. In its index you cannot find the 
names of idlers. Contribute something to the 
history of something. 



Saturday Sermonettes 133 

To know work as a friend is the hallmark of 
wisdom. It is by journeying through the shad- 
ows of life that we learn the solace of daily 
tasks. 

The tenderness that denies effort is cruelty. 
It makes characterless that which was endowed 
with strength. 

Work is expression. If you can't express 
yourself one way try another, — but try. If you 
can't build a cathedral, dig a ditch. But do some- 
thing. 

Only workers win the world's respect. God 
does not hold us responsible for results; only for 
faithfulness. 

Work was made for man, not man for work. 
He who fails at his task permits work to be his 
master. Success comes to him who is master of 
his work. 

Work is so respectable that there is no one no 
matter how rich or lazy who does not at least pre- 
tend to work at something and who does not want 
to be known as a worker. 

Work is the greatest educator. Tackle a job 
that is a little above you; grow to it and you en- 
gage in work. Tackle a job that is below you and 
you engage in drudgery. Put yout heart into 
work and your labor becomes the light of life. 

Work is the highway to human welfare. 



134 Pathfinders and Other 

CHRISTMAS IS COMING 

YES, Christmas is coming, sometime. It is 
coming when Christmas is a life and not a 
day; when it is an abiding spirit and not a one day 
in the year manifestation; when it is conduct and 
not a seeming; when it is a habit and not an exer- 
tion; when it is something within us and not 
without. 

Christmas is coming when at all times we love 
to give more than we love to get; when we love 
to serve at least as much as we love to be 
served. 

Christmas is coming when not only some homes 
but all homes are happy; when the spirit of good 
cheer binds all homes in its wonderful, warm and 
inclusive radiance and good homes are no longer 
bound within themselves. 

Christmas is coming when all children can play; 
when all homes are sunny and warm; when all 
tables are spread with bounty; when all stockings 
are full. 

Christmas is coming when our associated chari- 
ties will no longer have to dispense dolls to the 
little daughters of drunken fathers; when men are 
not allowed to grow rich by robbing children and 
mothers by demoralizing weak fathers and hus- 
bands. 



Saturday Sermonettes 135 

Christmas is coming when men are brave enough 
and true enough to help their brothers stand up 
soldier-like and fight the sordid powers that seek 
their selfish pots of gold by bringing men to 
shame and women and children to suffering and 
want. 

Christmas is coming when we allow no one to 
capitalize human weaknesses, to beggar the indi- 
vidual and debauch public morals. 

Christmas is coming when every laborer can 
look forward to an old age without fear; when 
widowed mothers do not have to live in dread lest 
some "benevolent" asylum will rob her of her 
children. 

Christmas is coming when judges look for jus- 
tice and not for loopholes and petty technical 
errors in the law. 

Christmas is coming when men seek not to take 
unfair advantage one of another but dwell in 
harmony, learning to love one another as He 
urges us to do; when men no longer suffer com- 
mercialized gambling places; when men no longer, 
with sunken eyes and fevered brain, clutch at 
each other's throats for gold; when stony faces 
no longer sneer at breaking hearts; when men are 
no longer set adrift on the waters of misery by 
fickle fortune; when their wailing voices are no 
longer lost in the rumbling roar of greed. 



136 Pathfinders and Other 

Christmas is coming when frail human moths 
are no longer lured to flutter about false lights and 
drop at last burned and bruised, on the cold gray- 
stones of dissipation. 

Christmas is coming when women no longer let 
themselves drift easily down the river of foolish 
fashion which has its end in the sea of unrest and 
where the false god of envy waits. 

Christmas is coming when we grow tolerant; 
when our wasting jealousies are woven into love 
and helpfulness. 

Christmas is coming when democracy is within 
rather than without our churches; when we follow 
the Master and not some sectarian interpreter 
of the Master; when all our churches grow strong 
through simple sincerity and as He would have us, 
become one in His name. 

When every man is at his best every day in the 
year and not just one day in the year, when we 
LIVE as Christ taught us to live, then will Christ- 
mas come. 



Saturday Sermonettes 137 

THE STAR OF CHRISTMAS 

HOLY legend tells us that in the quiet of a 
night many, many years ago, a wonderful 
star was seen above the land of Judea. Wise men 
wondered, and following its direction were led to a 
manger in Bethlehem. There were the marvelous 
mother and Babe. The wise men who followed this 
brilliant star were looking for the great prophet. 

Then as now men were impatient for that 
revolution which would reform the world, making 
it a better and a happier place in which to live. 
They sought the leader. 

That star which brought those men of the East 
so long, long ago to the most humble cradle of the 
Babe who was to be the perfect ruler of men, — 
the leader, wise, gentle and just, — has become the 
insignia which today, so many years after, we 
place at the apex of our Christmas trees in thought 
of the holy night so long ago. 

For it was on that night that the wonderful 
thing took place, — the coming of Him who was to 
establish the spirit of peace in a warring world. 

All through these long and many years He 
has been the chief inspiration in man's forward 
march. They who have found Him and have lost 
Him seek Him again, for they find His life lesson. 
His encouragement and His consolation fair. 



138 Pathfinders and Other 

Under a thousand names, under a thousand 
interpretations of His teachings, under as many 
creeds, and ten times as many articles of faith 
and confession, we have childishly quarreled in 
His name. 

But the wonder which rested under the star 
that hung over the land of Judea is more potent 
and tenderly sure today than ever before. 

We are beginning to believe in Him more than 
in His disciples, to follow Him more than His 
interpreters, to practise His spirit of peace, love 
and brotherhood rather than to cleave a line of 
bitterness between those who in His name have 
ventured to impose upon the world creeds that 
mark the differences rather than the harmony of 
those whom He loved, and lived to teach. 

Christmas is the day of days. Throughout the 
year we lend our thoughts and talents to strife 
and tumult, to the endless battle for advantage 
and gain. 

As tired children we come back at Christmas 
time to thoughts of Him, to the spirit of peace 
on earth, good will among men, to the big 
brotherhood He tried so hard to make us see. 
At Christmas time we let the Star of Bethlehem 
shine upon us and then, — in His name, — we 
practise giving to others rather than getting from 
others. 



Saturday Sermonettes 139 

This hallowed day of open hospitality is short. 
Too short. Our lives so crammed with eager 
strife leave but little room. It is a short day we 
give to Him but it is our merriest. Our memory 
of it and our anticipation of it sweetens the live- 
long year. 



140 Pathfinders and Other 

RESOLUTIONS 

MIRABEAU, the great French orator, de- 
scribed the impossible as "that blockhead of 
a word." Carlyle said "it is not a lucky word" 
and declared that no good comes to those who have 
it often in their mouths. The boy who always 
would do something if, — is the boy who never 
does anything. Determination is the full equip- 
ment for all gigantic tasks, 

"Pilgrim's Progress," Raleigh's "History of 
the World," "Robinson Crusoe" and Luther's 
"Translation of the Bible" were not written on 
mahogany tables before a marble manteled study 
fire. These and many more of the world's 
greatest books were written in prison cells. 
Milton and Homer were blind when they pro- 
duced the greatest epics ever penned. And 
Wellington, when some one spoke to him of the 
word "impossible" exclaimed: "Is anything im- 
possible.^ Read the newspapers." 

"Impossible" is the excuse of the negatively 
good. Positive goodness is the only good that 
counts, — the only good that helps men and pilots 
the progress of the world. 

Throw a man overboard into the sea and he 
admits no impossibility. Life is too precious to 
surrender without a struggle. He will battle for 



Saturday Sermonettes 141 

life against hope long after the ship from which 
he fell has disappeared beyond the horizon line. 

"Impossible" is the pet apology of the lazy. 
DO, — that is resolution. All else is submission. 
And submission is stagnation. Don't rust. 
The wise and the active conquer difficulties by 
daring to attempt them. 

In the Cycle of the Calender we come again to 
Resolution Day, — to the day of swearing off, — 
to reckoning day. Make no jest of it. It is the 
annual accounting day. Take stock of yourself. 
Invoice your capacities. Find out your short- 
comings and resolve to supply them. Make 
ready to make good. Cut out the thought of 
impossibility. Don't swear off, — SWEAR ON. 
Resolve to establish good habits, take on big 
purposes and, as if by magic, the habits that hob- 
ble our careers will vanish, for there cannot be room 
for both good and bad. 

Make your New Year's resolutions positive. 
Make them purposeful. And then make them 
hold. Remember that remorse is a counterfeit 
virtue. Regrets never atone. The merchant who 
teaches his boy his first mercantile lie degrades 
a man, — the boy passes out of his sight and 
somewhere in this great multitudinous mass of 
humanity that boy is duplicating and extending 
that sin. 



142 Saturday Sermonettes 

The man who wronged a woman years ago 
cannot through a resolution to turn a new leaf 
recall that woman from the shadow. He cannot 
blot out the consequences. 

Remorse cannot recall to the cartridge the bullet 
that the unreckoning hand sped forth. The 
thoughtless path is the way of least resistance 
but it leads to the rockiest road at the close. Be 
not afraid of the impossible. Go to it. Let your 
resolve be DO rather than donH. Then the ful- 
fillment of your resolutions will save you from 
shipwreck upon the rocks of disappointment, 
regret and remorse. 



PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY 
AND SONS COMPANY AT THE 
LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL. 



S5X^^^<^^■S•^^\^^&^'.■>^■&v.^^^ 



